ABSTRACT
Europe has become one of the main destinations on the world map of international migration. In Central Europe the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, and Slovenia already have a positive migration balance. Many Europeans, however, still do not see their homelands as destinations for immigration. Today, this contrafactual perception of demographic realities has become an obstacle to the development and implementation of proactive migration regimes. Remittances are a core topic related to international migration, and the World Bank is actively engaging in research to document both the magnitude and the direction of flows and to determine the impact of remittances on development. An assessment of documented flows indicates that their total volume has become substantially larger than the combined total of public and private official development assistance (ODA). In the twenty-first century, most countries of Europe will have to recruit highly skilled and maybe also semi-skilled immigrants.
