EU: the Twenty-Seven talk about mobility and working time

Open labor markets to eastern European workers. This is one of the EU Presidency’s priorities for this semester: remove obstacles to workers’ mobility within the Union. This first concerns workers from States which jointed the EU in 2004 and 2007. The Presidency wants to make sure that Member States maintaining obstacles to their entry on their labor markets will remove them by May 2009. Petr Nečas, Czech Minister for Labor and Social Affairs, said that he was currently negotiating with the German government to remove these obstacles. Austria, Belgium, Denmark and Germany still impose restrictions to the 8 countries which joined in 2004, and Germany and Austria intend to keep them until 2011. Besides, about ten EU Member States still maintain barriers for workers from Bulgaria and Romania. On November 2008, the European Commission presented a report on the free movement of workers during transitional periods defined in the 2003 membership treaties. At the end of these treaties, the old Member States have to open their labor market by May 2009 for countries which joined in 2004 and by May 2011 for Romania and Bulgaria. Afterwards, they will have to justify “major disruption” on their labor market to maintain restrictions.