BUCHAREST, Romania — French interim romania franta Emmanuel Macron arrived Thursday in Romania on the second leg of a trip to Central Europe that is meant to raise concerns about so-called “posted workers,” cheap labor from Eastern European nations posted temporarily to richer Western countries. The president is urging Romania to accept reforms of its rules on postings, saying it’s in the country’s best interest to become part of an open-border bloc and that failure to do so could jeopardize the EU’s future.

In hospitals and specialties disdained by French physicians, Romanian doctors have become indispensable gap-fillers. Their skills are needed for emergency care in remote rural areas or in psychiatric hospitals inherited from former lunatic asylums. They are sought for their ability to speak the local language, as well as to keep a medical dictionary on hand, like the traditional ‘country doctor’ of the past.

Navigating Employment: Opportunities for Romanian Workers in France

The number of Romanians in France is growing rapidly. Currently, around 133,000 people of Romanian descent live as immigrants in the country or are children of migrants who came to France in the early 20th century. More than 15,000 Roma, who are primarily from Romania and Bulgaria, also live in the country. French government officials will meet next week to decide whether to lift restrictions on working rights for the group, a move civil rights groups have long called for.

Many of the ‘posted workers’ in construction and other fields earn about half what they would get in Romania, with most of the rest sent back home to their families. They pay into the social security systems of their home countries but are perceived as pricing out local labor in Western Europe, where welfare costs are higher.