The French government has included agriculture in its list of “short-staffed” sectors to facilitate the recruitment of non-Europeans already irregularly working in France as part of efforts to fill the labour gap.
Adding agriculture to the list of “short-staffed” professional sectors was a promise made by France’s Prime Minister Gabriel Attal in response to farmers’ discontent.
This provision will apply to salaried farmers – livestock farmers, market gardeners, horticulturists, wine-growers and arboriculturists – in the same way as jobs in the hotel and catering or construction industries.
The FNSEA, France’s biggest farming union, has long advocated the inclusion of agriculture in the shortage sectors to fill some of the 70,000 vacancies in France every year, particularly throughout the fruit and vegetable harvest.
The union pointed to “a context of European competition in terms of labour costs” making recruiting staff for the physically strenuous, often low-wage jobs more difficult.
“There are too many farmers, too many arboriculturists, too many producers who tell us they can’t harvest because they can’t find seasonal workers. It’s a question of sovereignty and competitiveness for our producers,” said agriculture minister Marc Fesneau at a press conference on 21 February, announcing the measure ahead of the Salon de l’Agriculture mainstream farming event.
The decree was published in the French Official Journal on Saturday (2 March).
In concrete terms, irregular migrants applying for the permit must now prove that they have been in France for three years (instead of the previous 10) and present 12 payslips (instead of 24). Once obtained, the work permit is issued for a renewable period of one year.
Different legislation and approaches in the EU
Other EU countries are also taking steps to regularise the status of foreign workers to make up for labour shortages.
Germany, which has promised to attract 400,000 skilled workers every year, approved a plan to give undocumented immigrants easier access to professional language and integration courses.
“During Covid, Germany chartered entire planes to harvest hops. There is a very strong demand and a desire to fill the gap for these ‘dirty, dangerous and demeaning’ jobs that Europeans no longer want to do,” explained Virginie Guiraudon, Research Director at the CNRS, based at the Centre for European Studies at Sciences Po Paris.
Italy, which has an ageing population, has also introduced special residence permits to encourage the regularisation of workers already in the country, according to the researcher.
Spain, meanwhile, is making use of bilateral agreements with Maghreb countries to organise the arrival of labour, Guiraudon added.
According to a report by the European Parliament, Northern Europe still recruits mainly European workers, from Eastern and Central European countries. Many of the 300,000 seasonal farm workers in Germany come from Poland and Romania.
In southern Europe, including France, the trend is to recruit non-EU workers. According to figures from the Directorate General for Foreigners in France (DGEF), France has issued a total of 22,000 seasonal work permits to non-EU nationals, compared with 1,000 in 2012. Today, 75% of French seasonal workers are Moroccan.
Encouraged by the EU
A recent report from the European Commission encourages “targeted labour migration from third countries to reduce labour shortages in certain skill areas”.
The European Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development also published a study in 2019 calling for “strengthening the integration of seasonal and migrant workers into local communities”.
While the proportion of foreign workers in the EU agricultural sector remains low (less than 5%), seasonal workers – and migrant workers in particular – “play an essential role in meeting periodic peaks in demand for labour”, said the MEPs.
With a million seasonal workers helping out in the fields every year, the MEPs called on the EU to better integrate migrant labour, “a potential solution to the rural exodus” of Europeans.
While the left parties seem to be cautiously in favour, the decision of the French government has been rejected out of hand by France’s far-right, over fears that it will encourage mass immigration from outside Europe.
The moderate right (LR), on the other hand, is more divided. While most of the party’s leaders are opposed to the move, Céline Imart, number two on the list for the European elections, explained that it was “a step in the right direction” for farmers.
For the FNSEA, regularising the status of immigrant workers will provide a better framework for seasonal contracts, and “avoid situations that place workers in conditions that are morally unacceptable for our profession”.
[Edited by Angelo Di Mambro/Nathalie Weatherald]
