European politics

[knusch]

most ppl seem to come over serbia via hungary, but ofc some also via romania and bulgaria via hungary.

[Dolan]

Frontex has some official stats on this, they show the routes taken by migrants:



There's no mention of Romania, because the route is shorter through the Balkans, makes no sense to go so far up north then go through Hungary.
In fact, how could Hungary allow any illegal migrants when Orban's government has made a big show of how aggressively they cracked down on illegals at the border. Remember when they built those chain-link fences with razor wire on top? It's always been a big bragging point for Hungary to show how well they manage to repel any attempts at crossing their borders illegally. When that happened back in 2015, migrants tried to get to Hungary from Serbia not Romania. Why, because it was useless to go through Romania then Hungary, when you could go directly through Serbia. Romania's border is also much harder to cross, since it's a huge river (Danube) and you need boats and they're easy to spot and to intercept by the border police patrol ships.

Anyway, this stuff will be discussed with technical arguments at the EU Council, so I'm sure they won't just make a decision based on anecdotes and hearsay. They'll have to present some hard data. However, the Austrian government might still make some generic claims about Romania's corruption among border officials so that they can stick with their opposition and nail those political points back home.

[knusch]

serbia is pressured to tighten visa regimes to curb migration other than that its not part of EU or Schengen - not much more austria can do.
in the case of romania and bulgaria austria can make a fuss about claiming that about 40% of migrants showing up in austria passed through romania/bulgaria.

i assume the only reason why hungary doesn't get trashed for letting everyone just through is the general anti migraiton alignment shared in hungary + conservative party friends in power.

[RefluxSemantic]

I believe the problem is not necessarily actual immigrants. The problem would be romanians coming to richer countries to 'steal' the jobs. They are willing to work for far less because the cost of living in their country is much lower, thus being essentially unfair competition.

There is definitely a real difficulty here. Im also quite sure that right leaning politicians try to really abuse it though.

[Dolan]

Nah, it's not that. Romanians can already freely move to another EU country and work there without any problem. The only difference Schengen makes is that they have to show an ID card or passport at the border crossing. That's all.
So everyone who wanted to leave the country already did. And can still do it without any issues.
The Schengen thing is more impactful for trucks which need to pass border checks at Schengen points, and since this takes time, big queues form. Which is a major cause of annoyance for companies.
Also people who travel by car between EU countries, for tourism or for another reason. Those will also have to wait at the border.
But anyone who just takes a plane and flies to another EU country can continue to do that freely without any issue.

[Dolan]

As for stealing jobs, it's debatable. More often what happens is that Romanians either do jobs that the locals refuse to do since it's hard physical labour and the locals consider it beneath them to do that for low pay, or they're plugging labour deficits in that EU country.
Like Romanian doctors and nurses who migrated to Germany or the UK didn't put German and British doctors and nurses out of work, they helped their health systems make sure they don't run out of staff. Eventually after Brexit, Britain started feeling the burn, as lots of Romanian nurses left, I think.
So we're actually doing you a favour. One of the reasons why our country is declining demographically and yours aren't doing that as fast is also because we've lost a lot of competent workforce to your companies.
So if those Romanians at some point came back here, this would be great for us and would suck for you badly. Hopefully this happens. So that then you can feel relieved that the Romanians have left your precious sanctuary.

[harcha]

Went to the car wash last week and half the staff was Kazakh. And those bois are working hard.

[Dolan]

Yeah, because we lost workforce here, some of our companies have started bringing Vietnamese and other such people from even poorer countries on temporary visas to do work for which they cannot find workforce anymore

[lejend]

Globalism is cool. Imagine if we had open borders and free trade worldwide

[duckzilla]

I believe the problem is not necessarily actual immigrants. The problem would be romanians coming to richer countries to 'steal' the jobs. They are willing to work for far less because the cost of living in their country is much lower, thus being essentially unfair competition.

There is definitely a real difficulty here. Im also quite sure that right leaning politicians try to really abuse it though.

Economically, immigration is simply a boon. The vast majority of the population profits significantly when immigration into the labor market is high. However, you may run into problems when it's not about economics, but about identity politics, e.g. "whites" in the US no longer making up a majority or Germans fearing the "Umvolkung" by mixing in foreign cultures/genetic material.
That's all there is to say about whether immigration is a good or bad thing.

[duckzilla]

Yeah, because we lost workforce here, some of our companies have started bringing Vietnamese and other such people from even poorer countries on temporary visas to do work for which they cannot find workforce anymore

Actually, parts of Eastern Germany started to look for future apprentices in Vietnam again. My wife's cousin did just that and recently finished his apprenticeship somewhere in the countryside in the middle of Thuringia.

[RefluxSemantic]

Nah, it's not that. Romanians can already freely move to another EU country and work there without any problem. The only difference Schengen makes is that they have to show an ID card or passport at the border crossing. That's all.
So everyone who wanted to leave the country already did. And can still do it without any issues.
The Schengen thing is more impactful for trucks which need to pass border checks at Schengen points, and since this takes time, big queues form. Which is a major cause of annoyance for companies.
Also people who travel by car between EU countries, for tourism or for another reason. Those will also have to wait at the border.
But anyone who just takes a plane and flies to another EU country can continue to do that freely without any issue.

Im still quite sure this is the root of the sentiment that the politicians are aiming at.

I dont really agree with the sentiment, but its a pretty prevalent sentiment. Used to be a big talking points in the Netherlands too. Ofc it doesnt help that many people are quite xenophobe.

[Dolan]

Globalism is cool. Imagine if we had open borders and free trade worldwide

EU is not globalism tho, it's regionalism between countries that are somewhat culturally closer than countries from different continents

[Dolan]

I dont really agree with the sentiment, but its a pretty prevalent sentiment. Used to be a big talking points in the Netherlands too. Ofc it doesnt help that many people are quite xenophobe.

Xenophobia is a culture's natural response against what is perceived as an intrusion in the native way of life.
There's a tribe on an island next to India, the Sentinelese, who not only rejects anyone who isn't from the tribe setting foot on the island, but sometimes they killed intruders that ventured onto the island.
Somehow, leftwing and green ideologies today are very vocal about protecting native cultures from jungles, but when it comes to their own culture, they become turbo cosmopolitans, everyone's welcome, in fact, we should do everything to move the whole world in Europe.
This "do good" ideology makes them prioritise other peoples' good to the point of sabotaging their own culture, not seeing the long-term consequences of doing that.
It's like cultures have ages and in their later ages they lose their nativity/instincts and become a generic power structure.

[duckzilla]

It's like cultures have ages and in their later ages they lose their nativity/instincts and become a generic power structure.

Cultures are not very stable constructs to begin with and they move faster the larger and the more heterogeneous an underlying population becomes. I'm not sure whether I understand what you mean with "generic power structure". Apart from specific implementations of political systems (democracies, dictatorships or whatever), the fundamental principle of power structures is still: an individual's power depends on its means to influence other people to do what it wants. These means can manifest in different ways, e.g. oaths of loyalty by subjects, lots of money or simply charisma.

While the power structures of the Sentinelese and a western european country may look different at first glance, the underlying principles are not. It is just that money is an absurdly efficient tool to accumulate power in a high population capitalist societies. It's quite difficult to get a personal oath of loyalty of the ~60 million inhabitants of France. But given enough cash, I can get what I want by effectively bribing the government.

[Dolan]

This decision to once again reject Romania from Schengen upset lots of people here, so they will start boycotting every Austrian company in Romania.
They will start pulling their money out of BCR, the biggest commercial bank in Romania owned by the Erste Group, and will stop buying gas from OMV Petrom.

[Horsemen]

This decision to once again reject Romania from Schengen upset lots of people here, so they will start boycotting every Austrian company in Romania.
They will start pulling their money out of BCR, the biggest commercial bank in Romania owned by the Erste Group, and will stop buying gas from OMV Petrom.

Meanwhile in Brexit land people get upset for exactly opposite reasons

[Dolan]

This decision to once again reject Romania from Schengen upset lots of people here, so they will start boycotting every Austrian company in Romania.
They will start pulling their money out of BCR, the biggest commercial bank in Romania owned by the Erste Group, and will stop buying gas from OMV Petrom.

Meanwhile in Brexit land people get upset for exactly opposite reasons

Upset for leaving Schengen despite never having been part of it?

[Horsemen]

This decision to once again reject Romania from Schengen upset lots of people here, so they will start boycotting every Austrian company in Romania.
They will start pulling their money out of BCR, the biggest commercial bank in Romania owned by the Erste Group, and will stop buying gas from OMV Petrom.

Meanwhile in Brexit land people get upset for exactly opposite reasons

Upset for leaving Schengen despite never having been part of it?

bad faith

[Dolan]

anarchy in the uk

[harcha]

ya can't park there mate

[Dolan]

Romanian government ministries and agencies moving their money out of Austrian bank BCR. That's like their biggest client
Also lots of big companies here stopped buying gas from OMV Petrom, which used to be the largest gas station network.

Last bar in each graph represents OMV Petrom compared to the rest of the market

Their turnover


The profits they used to make here


Number of employees


These numbers are unlikely to look like that next year

[duckzilla]

So you say we should buy some puts?

[knusch]

So you say we should buy some puts?

you have to be quick tho. once the romanian state decides to divest their share in the company the stock will be in freefall.
fundamentals also look shaky in the short term. difficult to see the viability of a company that explores and sells gas/oil will in the current environment.

[Dolan]

So you say we should buy some puts?

On OMV Petrom and BCR Romania, most likely, yeah. The others (Omniasig, Raiffeisen, Pfanner, Atomic, Fischer, Frey Wille, Julius Meinl, Humanic, Red Bull, Swarovski) have a smaller footprint here, unlikely to move the market much