Free movement of workers and Accession : The second phase 2006-2009

The Commission has issued a statement summarizing the transitional measures taken or to be taken by the 15 member States for the free movement of the workers under the accession treaty of 2003 for the period covering 2006-2009.

After the last enlargement on May 1st 2004 member States have had the possibility to introduce transitional arrangements concerning the access to their labour markets by workers from eight New Member States. Workers from Malta and Cyprus did not fall under that exemption.

The first phase of these transitional arrangements ended on May 1st, 2006.

Paragraph 2 of point 3 of the country-specific annexes to the 2003 Act of Accession requires all EU-15 member States to notify the Commission 'no later than at the end of the two year period following the date of accession' (April 30th, 2006) whether they will continue applying national measures or measures resulting from bilateral agreements, or whether they will apply Community law on access to their labour markets. The annexes also state that in the absence of such notification by a particular Member State, Community law on free movement of workers shall apply in that Member State from 1 May 2006 onwards.

It appears from the Commission's statement that Spain, Finland, Greece and Portugal will lift the existing restrictions. France will lift some of its restrictions gradually. Ireland, Sweden and the United Kingdom don't have restrictions anyway and don't intend to introduce any new ones.

Comments

[Mélanie Fourret]

Free movement of people is good for economies and for the people themselves.

To destroy a old stereotype: Don't think that people leave their country hoping to never come back... they want to go home, to be next to their family or property. The day esatern European countries' economy boost up, you'll see who begs for much needed manpower.

Political debate tend to scapegoat foreigners for everything.... it's easy when you do don't have a proper integration policy allowing foreigners to integrate smoothly. You can go on playing the blame game for ever. Since free movement of workers in a reality we cannot escape in the EU, I just think that we need to start focusing on integrating this labour. This is the logical issue to tackle, and we are already failing it.
I am not pessimist but in this field I fear politicians will continue to fail us. The consequence is increased discrimination and the destruction of the social Europe which is, to my opinion, the only way to let the European project live on.

Time to work on integration policies!