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The prospect of a number of East European countries' accession to the EU has given rise to fears that a "trek westwards" will follow, which would place severe economic and political strains on the Western European target countries. EU politicians and some of their voters are therefore demanding transitional periods of several years. But are the expectations of massive East-West migration justified? Thomas Straubhaar* East-West Migration: Will It Be a Problem? T he closer the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) get towards EU membership, the hotter the issue of East-West migration becomes. The political discussion and the academic debate have gained both momentum and roughness. Economists and econometricians argue about the size and speed of potential East-West migration flows. There are dozens of approaches to guesstimating the East-West migration potential 1 and not surprisingly the results seem to differ according to the methods used or the assumptions made. 2 The Double Extrapolation Problem The main methodological difficulty lies in the fundamental political and institutional change that goes along with the accession to the European Union (EU). Coming in from the cold (war) into the well-established EU is doubtlessly a unique experience in the history of the CEECs. Thus, if there is a case where the famous Lucas-critique is well applied, it is in the case of the EU enlargement and its effects on East-West migration flows. 3 The methodological key questions are: how far can we (1) use experiences in the past to learn something for the future and (2) speculate about free migration in an area where there has not yet been any (legal) migration at all?

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