Despite high unemployment in many parts of Europe, few Europeans look for work in another EU country. This is partly because of the difficulty of finding a job abroad. The European network of Employment Services (Eures) was launched in 1993 to help with this. MEPs debate it on Wednesday 24 February and vote on it the following day.
Language barriers and the difficulty of finding a job abroad means relatively few people in Europe move to another member state for work. Every year only 0.29% of people do so in the EU (excluding Croatia), while in Australia 1.5% move between the eight states for a job and in the US 2.4% of workers cross state lines for employment, according to an OECD study published in March 2012. In total only 7.5 million out of 241 million European workers – about 3.1% – has a job in another EU country.
source: europarl.europa.eu