EUROPE: Brussels pushes for more east-west mobility

The European Union wants to increase mobility to and from its eastern neighbours. In general, the eastern neighbours agree. But a recent conference in Warsaw found that hurdles such as brain drain, visa issues, recognition and reciprocity still hamper a significant volume increase.

Brussels has set aside more funds for mobility under the EU's Eastern Partnership programme in the two years that remain before the anticipated grand overhaul of education and training programmes in 2014. But investing these funds in the most meaningful way is not so easy.

A large conference organised by the Polish presidency of the European Union in Warsaw on 6-7 July convened some 350 people from the EU and its eastern neighbours to discuss how best to expand and optimise mobility and its benefits for individuals, institutions and countries, and how the Eastern Partnership Platform IV, "Contact Between People", can contribute to this.

At the conference, education commissioner Androulla Vassiliou said she was hopeful that mobility could be increased but that some tenacious hurdles continue to thwart the development of mobility to its full potential.

"There is no denying that the obstacles to mobility between our regions are numerous," Vassiliou said.

"There is the lack of information about mobility opportunities, inadequate financial support and a poor knowledge of foreign languages. But there are also legal barriers, particularly when it comes to obtaining visas or work permits, and there are problems with the recognition of academic work completed abroad."

She was pleased, however, that the conference had identified areas where the two regions can work together to eliminate some of these obstacles.

"We will provide financial support through our mobility programmes and we can also provide curricular support through a variety of mechanisms such as the Diploma Supplement and the European Credit Transfer System. But we must also lend more personal support, especially in the form of guidance and counselling, in order to more effectively convince a wider range of individuals to take part," Vassiliou told the conference.

One of the people who has witnessed at first hand how mobility can be a life changer is Ukrainian Yegor Domanov. He travelled to Finland on a Marie Curie grant to perform research into lipid biophysics and now works as an engineer of advanced research at L'Oreal in Paris.

"My career track is a good example of how it should work," he said.

It is, but it also exposes the caveats of mobility and the trial-and-error nature of European support to it.

"I actually was funded twice by Marie Curie grants," said Domanov. "First I had the incoming international fellowship, which got me to the University of Helsinki. The second was a European Reintegration Grant, which got me to France and topped up a local foundation grant."

European Reintegration Grants were originally meant to support reintegration in the sending country. That was a great idea but it failed to work.

People trained to the highest standards often do not want to return to their country of origin, where either the pay is low or they cannot carry out advanced research in their academic fields. The grant rules have been softened repeatedly and they are now called Career Integration Grants, aimed at helping people to get settled in a(ny) new environment.

With Domanov, Ukraine lost a talent, and this exposes one of the key reservations many people have about academic mobility. He, however, does not agree that such fears of mobility do justice to its more subtle advantages.

"When someone goes abroad, the home country does not necessarily lose that person," he said. "When I was in Finland, I built the contacts that became the foundation of a good proposal which my colleagues in Ukraine are now having funded through a grant. Also, Ukrainian students and researchers came to my laboratory in Finland to spend two or three months with me. The benefits of my fellowship extended well beyond me personally.

"But still, I agree, the situation is not perfect. It would have been a real success story if I had found a full time research position in Ukraine."

This was a key concern at the conference. Striking a balance between mobility and brain drain is difficult.

In the 1990s, Nordic countries covertly carved up the brains of their region in a kind of scramble for the Baltics. Estonia to the Fins, Latvia to the Swedes, Lithuania to the Danes.

The best bachelor level students were invited to continue their studies in Scandinavia and received a work permit for their efforts. In each country, the whole thing was presented as a grant scheme, supporting the development of the Baltic states. It was a delicate issue at the time.

Is there a hidden agenda behind the EU's aims to boost mobility from its eastern neighbours?

Domanov does not think so and the rhetoric in Warsaw seemed to support his view.

"The commission is open enough," he said. "It acknowledges brain drain as a problematic side effect, but one of the key issues for the commission seems precisely to be to make mobility more reciprocal - to also boost west-east mobility."

That was a big issue when Tempus was the main driver of east-west mobility in the 1990s and it will still be difficult to achieve today. The underlying question is, however, whether brain drain is a bad thing at all.

In 2005, then Albanian education minister Genc Pollo said in an interview that he thought brain drain was brilliant.

"It proves that our education system is basically sound," he said. "It proves that we can develop essential knowledge in our youth and that all we lack is an economic environment that can hold on to the brightest of our people.

"Yes, we lose our most gifted citizens, but their success abroad is an enormous performance incentive for those who are left behind and the real challenge for us is to stay in touch with our expatriates so that we can benefit from their experiences."

Those were very, very wise words and the gist of Domanov's argument is very similar.

"In essence they gave me a choice and I had all the possibilities to return. My grant included a reintegration phase. The third year was for reintegration in Ukraine. But I simply refused that and using it wasn't a strict rule. They never offered me a work permit or a job."

There is no doubt that mobility has resulted in dramatic improvements in Domanov's personal life and career. But does it really benefit anything beyond the personal level?

"Absolutely," he said. "Science in general benefits hugely from mobility. To use an analogy from the sciences: in physics, when you shake things, they tend to settle better.

"The benefit for Ukraine as a country is obvious too. Wherever I go I represent Ukraine. What I do helps build the image of Ukraine in the international community. I believe that this is tremendously important.

"Ukraine was very isolated in the Soviet Union. People know relatively little about it. So it is nice to be an ambassador in this sense. It's not always the people who go abroad who build the best image for a country. When a researcher goes abroad, it generally means good publicity."

His biggest issue with maximising the benefits for his home country is specific to Ukraine.

"Theoretically there is nothing that will prevent me from returning to Ukraine later. I can be very useful in Ukraine if there is a will to restore its scientific community. But from the conference I learned that this will is simply not there. There were no high level participants from Ukraine. This was in striking contrast with countries such as Georgia and others. The Ukrainian government is simply not interested at the moment. I hope that this will change."

However sensible they may appear, Domanov's comments are still a result of his own luck and effort, and they do beg a reaction from a government representative. Would the departure of the best of Ukraine's scientists towards the more affluent western part of the continent be looked on favourably?

One country that did send high-level representation was Moldova, and if any country has suffered from brain drain in the past two decades, it is this tiny republic that lies wedged between Romania and Ukraine. In peak years more than 10% of its population have moved abroad.

Loretta Handrabura, Moldova's Deputy Minister for Education, was asked whether she agreed that the mobility of students and researchers should be increased?

"In my opinion, academic mobility not only guarantees one of the basic rights of the citizen - the freedom of development of his or her personality - but also promotes intercultural exchanges and dialogue and cooperation between states. It develops education systems, enhances their competitiveness and opens them to the rest of the world," she said.

"That's why we predominantly support increased mobility," she added.

"No doubt, with the increasing mobility of students and scientists, we risk losing our most qualified specialists. But at the end of the day, it is not mobility that is at fault here. It is the weak economy of the country.

"The problem of the brain drain is, unfortunately, not easy to manage. What is certain, however, is that preventing academics from going abroad to take and learn the best from other education systems and research institutions is a very poor way of managing it. The problem should be solved strategically, by means of socio-economic politics. But never at the expense of mobility."

She said that providing Moldova's citizens with the possibility of studying abroad - but also opening up the system to foreign citizens - contributes to the development and modernisation of the national economy and eventually will increase the number of qualified people who, in the long run, will choose their homeland as a place of work.

"We cannot insist that people return to Moldova after their studies abroad. We cannot make mobility conditional so long as we cannot provide them with similar opportunities as they can find abroad. But even with positive growth of the economy, it would be a violation of human rights to make mobility conditional," she argued.

In the end, Handrabura followed the line of Genc Pollo, who believed that Albanians abroad were still Albanians.

"I am firmly convinced that eventually their sense of patriotism will make enough Moldovans return home, with lots of interesting investment projects for the benefit of our country," she said.