Brussels (dpa) – The EU is to grant a fast-track admission procedure and a decent salary to highly-qualified foreign workers wishing to relocate to Europe, a top EU official said Thursday. The initiative, which includes a future “Blue Card” – the EU’s equivalent to the Green Card in the US – is designed to counter labour shortages and entice more skilled workers from Africa, Asia and South America, most of whom currently prefer to seek employment in the United States. “We have to shift … our traditional way of thinking of migration as a world of loss and sorrow,” Franco Frattini, the EU commissioner who holds the immigration portfolio, said in a speech delivered to a conference in Lisbon, a copy of which was made available in Brussels.
