Foreign worker

BELGRADE - Over 50,000 work permits were issued to foreign workers in Serbia last year, and the majority of them were Russians, the Confederation of Autonomous Trade Unions of Serbia said on its website, quoting figures released by the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Veteran and Social Affairs.

Authorities have arrested three suspects over a fire that killed at least five workers, including foreign nationals, in Istanbul's Güngören district.

At a meeting on Wednesday, the Romanian government approved bringing up to 50,000 the contingent of non-EU workers who can apply for employment this year in Romania, according to Minister of Labour and Social Protection Raluca Turcan.

President Donald Trump announced what he described as a "temporary suspension of immigration into the United States." But the executive order would bar only those seeking permanent residency, not temporary workers.

France will start setting quotas for migrant workers next year, the labor minister said today. This is part of President Emmanuel Macron's government action to strive to strengthen immigration policies in response to right-wing criticism, AFP reported.

The Croatian government on Wednesday approved higher quotas for foreign workers: 2,000 work permits for the tourism industry and 1,000 for the construction sector. The possibility of an additional 1,000 permits was discussed in case shortages arise in the domestic workforce in both sectors.

As Germany struggles to absorb more than a million migrants from the Middle East and Africa, the government is hoping to avoid the mistakes it made half a century ago when it brought in a generation of guest workers from Turkey.

With adoption of the Regulation on the implementation of the Labor Migration and Labor Mobility Act, the state will ease the regime for hiring foreign workers, the Ministry of Economy said, quoted by the Bulgarian National Radio.

It is expected that the rules will be adopted by the Council of Ministers next week.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ordered Greece to compensate 42 Bangladeshi nationals to the tune of more than half a million euros for essentially turning a blind eye to their exploitation on a strawberry farm in southwestern Greece in 2013.

As Turkish and EU leaders discuss a joint action plan agreement to deal with the migrant crisis, with the former asking the latter to share the burden, a German government official has underlined the need for Turkey to better integrate Syrian refugees, comparing the situation to Germany's experience dealing with "Gastarbeiter," or guest workers, in the post-war period.