Abstract

Free movement of workers is one of the basic economic freedoms in the European Union (EU). Labour mobility is supposed to promote a flexible and efficient European labour market. The EU Commission aims at facilitating migration and commuting since this is seen as a way to reduce labour market disparities and to improve the matching of labour supply and demand. However, although free movement of EU workers was implemented already in the late 1960's mobility levels have remained comparatively low.

The project focuses on a specific form of international labour mobility, on cross-border commuting. This kind of mobility implies that employees work in another member state without moving their residence to that country. We investigate the development and structure of cross-border commuting in the Danish-German border region.

The project extends the existing knowledge on labour mobility in the Danish-German border region since it for the first time conducts a comprehensive symmetric investigation of commuting flows, i.e. to analyse mobility in both directions across the border. This unique data rests on a harmonized method of identifying cross-border commuters in Danish and German statistics. Moreover, the data sources provide consistent time series that offer reliable information on changes in the amount of commuting. And finally, the data includes some structural information on commuters and their workplaces, such as nationality, age, income, industry and size of the firm.