HOW many is too many? The Home Office has been grappling with this nettle for many months and yesterday John Reid, the Home Secretary, finally came to a decision about European migration.

Mr Reid decided that Bulgarians and Romanians who join the European Union are too many. We are replete of Estonians, Hungarians, Poles and the other seven nationalities that joined the European Union in 2004. Workers from the two nations that join next year will therefore represent a surfeit and Bulgarian and Romanian jobseekers are to be controlled by quotas.

If you find this reasoning odd, it is because you suspect, rightly, that the Government has an ulterior motive. It is true that Romania and Bulgaria are poor countries, certain to generate a footfall of opportunity-seeking migrants from next year. Britain did massively underestimate the volume of migration in the first wave and Bulgaria does have a nasty gangster problem but the latter is a policing issue, not one of employment.

Why is Mr Reid so fearful of Romanians and Bulgarians? Past experience of European migrants has been good. Britain absorbed the last wave of migrants with aplomb; Polish labour is fuelling the building trade in the South East, barely keeping a lid on construction costs while the great Olympic white elephant in East London hoovers up every spare electrician and welder.

Moreover, these immigrants from the East are easily absorbed, learn English quickly and pass unnoticed. They don’t seem to want to kill us and they work like Trojans for whatever money they can get.

Here is Mr Reid’s problem. The new Europeans represent competition for Britons seeking unskilled or semi-skilled jobs. And it is black and brown Britons that are particularly threatened by the pale-skinned workers from the Baltic and Black Sea. Unemployment among ethnic minorities in Britain is disproportionately high. There is massive concern within government about joblessness among young Asian males and genuine fear of what idle thoughts will fill those years of empty days.

Competition between minority groups is not new. In the United States, the struggle between new Hispanic immigrants and established African-Americans for access to jobs and social services is acute. Hispanics complain about discriminatory programmes that favour established African-Americans.

Tellingly, the Commission for Racial Equality has said that the Eastern European migration creates “major new issues” for the established population. How long will it be before the queue of Polish labourers begins to cause resentment among “established” minorities. Has it already happened and is Mr Reid minded to keep out Romanians because they are white?

C02 credits losing creditability

EUROPE will look proud and stiff in Helsinki today and condescend to America in talks about climate change policy. We should not be too dismissive because even condescension is progress. This meeting between the US and EU is a first — President Bush’s rejection of the Kyoto Protocol, which imposed targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, left the two sides with little to discuss.

They have heaps to discuss today because the rampaging growth in carbon dioxide volumes has made Kyoto an irrelevance and Europe’s performance in emission-reduction has been worse than lamentable.

Meanwhile, American public opinion has moved on, even among staunch Republicans and the Bush presidency is on its last legs. Only yesterday, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California, agreed a partnership with the State of New York, allowing power plants in each state to trade emissions credits. The Governor, who famously gave up his fleet of Hummer vehicles, is championing a market-driven cap and trade system of CO2 credits to encourage industry to reduce emissions.

Europe already has such a system but, sadly, can offer Governor Schwarzenegger no example to follow. So pusillanimous were member states in their allocation of carbon permits that most countries emerged well below their emission targets and the price of carbon collapsed in the first year of trading. The Commission is now reviewing allocation plans for the next phase. If it fails to end the namby-pamby behaviour by member states, emissions trading is a dead duck policy. Maybe Europe should take advice from the Terminator.

carl.mortished@thetimes.co.uk

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