Cameron: Immigration between UK, EU in Balance

Prime Minister of the United Kingdom David Cameron addresses to media during a press conference on the second day of the Lisbon Nato Summit on 20 November 2010 in Lisbon, Portugal. Photo by EPA/BGNES

British Prime Minister David Cameron has said that the immigration between Britain and the rest of the EU is pretty much in balance, but this does not hold true for the rest of the world.

"If you stand back and sort of look at the big picture, actually the immigration between Britain and the rest of the EU is pretty much in balance, it's between Britain and the rest of the world where it's got badly out of balance, where we have this large level of net migration in to the UK," Cameron told Sky News.

"That is partly economic migration it's also about huge numbers of people coming over to settle in the UK; it's also about a lot of people, some of whom are abusing the student regime."

David Cameron has said the immigration cap, due to come into force next year, will be "business friendly".

Businesses have been lobbying the government to exempt transfers within companies from the cap on workers from outside the European Economic Area.

A temporary cap is in place but an announcement is expected next week on permanent measures from next April.

The PM told Sky News: "We will try and exempt many of the inter-company transfers from the immigration system."

Net migration - the difference between the number of people coming to live in the UK and the number emigrating - stood at 196,000 last year.

The United Kingdom is one of the ten EU member states that have kept job restrictions on citizens of Bulgaria and Romania that joined the EU in 2007.

Bulgaria has recently renewed its calls for an open door labor market in the ten older member states that still impose restrictions for job-seekers from the country.

Bulgarian politicians say they do not expect all countries to lift the restrictions to their labor markets simultaneously, but their aim is to draw the public attention to the issue and pile up pressure on these countries to take this important step prior to 2011.

The restrictions can be kept for another two years, until 2013, if the countries present evidence to back up their claims that the Bulgarian and Romanian job-seekers are a burden for their labor markets.

The European Commission and the European Parliament can only recommend to the member states to open their labor markets for Bulgarians and Romanians, but it is up to the countries themselves to take the final decision.

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