When Niko Alexiev left Sofia to go to France in 2011, he did not expect to ever live in Bulgaria again, the Wall Street Journal writes.

But after the pandemic began, Alexiev was laid off and, like tens of thousands of other foreign workers in Western Europe, returned home in June 2020. Now, after more than a year in Bulgaria, he has a job in Sofia and has no plans to return abroad. .

After a decade of mass migration from the former Eastern bloc to more lucrative people, the possibility of Western movement in Europe is showing signs of reversing.

In Estonia, the number of people who have returned to the country has exceeded the number of emigrants since 2017. Net migration to Poland has been green since 2016. And the trend is accelerating during the pandemic. Lithuania, which has lost a quarter of its citizens since 1990, saw a slight increase in population of the year after COVID-19 halted waves of immigrants that have long led to the exodus of young people.

But nowhere is the reversal of the trend sharper than in Bulgaria.

Before the pandemic, Bulgaria is expected to be in second place among the fastest melting countries in the world after Lithuania, according to UN forecasts. Its population decreased from nearly 9 million in the late 1980s to about 7 million. today.

Last year, however, net migration to the country was positive for the first time in more than a decade. The number of returnees to Bulgaria was about 30,000 more than those who left in 2020, the vast majority of whom were Bulgarian citizens.

Now the question is whether the returnees will stay. The answer will be large on both sides of the Old Continent. Western European countries are facing record labor shortages, and many jobs that are typical of foreign workers remain vacant. And in countries like Bulgaria, the return of migrants will strongly support economies that have been short of skilled workers and young people for a generation.

“The waves of people leaving Central and Eastern Europe heading west have stopped,” said Ognyan Georgiev of the foreign policy council.

Last year, he conducted a study that found that tens of thousands of Bulgarians living abroad for a long time had returned home during the pandemic.

“I would say that this is a significant percentage of them,” Georgiev said, referring to those who had returned home. “This is really a boost for the economy, not only for Bulgaria, but also for countries like Romania and Poland. There is an awareness that a person can have a good quality of life in Eastern Europe as well.

The 29-year-old Alexiev returned to Sofia at the time, thinking it would be temporary. But he quickly decided not to return to the country.

Although he earns almost half in terms of income as an employee at the airport in Nice, France, he says the money in Bulgaria will go to much more. He lives in the city center next to a well-kept green park. He went out to restaurants more often than could be allowed in France, and still managed to save.

My office at the outsourcing company Telus International, which manages a team of French-speaking employees, has a private gym with 360-degree views of the city. Many of his friends from an intensive French language school, which usually sends many graduates abroad, have also returned home.

“Sofia surprised me,” says Alexiev. “It offers very good opportunities, even better, less than some western cities in terms of quality of life,” which is this.

In general, the quality of life in Bulgaria lags behind that in both countries in Europe. It is the poorest EU member state, and distrust of state institutions is huge. Less than 30% of citizens have been vaccinated against COVID-19, the lowest percentage in the bloc. A study by Transparency International found that one-fifth of locals admitted to paying a bribe to gain access to health care during the year, followed by the largest share in the EU after neighboring Romania.

In April, after months of anti-corruption protests, the prime minister failed to secure enough space to form a government and resign. An official decree came to power until a new regular cabinet was formed earlier this month after the November elections and months of political meetings.

Magdalena Kostova, a demographer at the National Statistical Institute, says she is skeptical that many of the returnees will stay for a long time. Economic opportunities, education and access to basic services remain far better in other parts of Europe, she said.

“In recent years, living conditions have improved, but they are private in Sofia. This is not the case in the rest of the country, “Kostova said.

In northwestern Bulgaria, the most depopulated region in the country, villages are becoming ghost towns. Hoping to encourage the targeting of EU businesses, it is funding new roads, bridges and railways. But even in the factories created, many of the jobs are automated. Rows of suburban houses built with emigrant money sent home are dark.

Ivaylo Ivanov, who works abroad as a confectioner on cruise ships, was part of a mass exodus from Vratsa that has lost almost 40% of the population in the last two decades. Since 2005, the district has spent only a few months at home each year.

After the cruise industry was blocked in the spring of 2020, Ivanov must return to Vratsa. You found a job as a courier, but my pay was less than a quarter of what I earned on the ship. He began to accumulate debts.

He reopened the site in March and now works in a hotel in Germany. He says he wants to stay in Bulgaria, where he and his wife have a home and can spend time with his two sons, but from an economic point of view he has no choice.

“Salaries in Bulgaria are catastrophic. The owners of all successful businesses treat people like slaves, “said Ivanov.

Recently, Western Europe has been in desperate need of Eastern workers as the largest economies in the Old Continent are in short supply. Germany has more than a million job vacancies after a sharp drop in net immigration, and authorities say they want to attract about 400,000 skilled workers from the country each year. Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria and the United Kingdom set record vacancies this year.

In Lithuania, one of the few Eastern European countries to publish monthly statistics on migration, the number of emigrants began to rise in August. But the possibility of the omix option to block travel abroad.

Atanas Pekanov, who was deputy prime minister for the management of European funds in Bulgaria’s caretaker government, says the pandemic has given the country a good chance. The more people stay in Bulgaria, the more likely it is to stay permanently, he said. “They are getting used to the fact that they are here,” says Pekanov.

He considers the melting population in Bulgaria to be “the main long-term experience”, and the outflow of young people, he said, is “quite depressing”.

Pekanov himself returned to Bulgaria during the pandemic. After the previous prime minister resigned in April, Pekanov returned from Austria, where he is working on his doctorate to become part of the caretaker government.

He says people who have stayed abroad should return to Bulgaria. But that now that the new government will be governed on the site, he will probably return to Vienna.