EU:The Government's decision to restrict the right of Bulgarians and Romanians to work in Ireland sends an unfriendly message to our new EU partners and may be discriminatory. It is also unjustified because migration from both countries is stabilising or falling after years of migration in the 1990s and is more likely to be directed towards Spain or Italy.
These are the key findings of a new Europe-wide study which recommends that the 15 EU states that still maintain restrictions on workers from both countries should lift them as soon as possible.
Who's afraid of the latest EU enlargement? was prepared by the European Citizens' Action Service (ECAS), a Brussels-based non-government organisation promoting civil rights.
The report concludes there is no need to fear the latest EU enlargement in 2007 and that working restrictions had been implemented "after the horse has bolted" because of the huge level of migration from Romania and Bulgaria in the 1990s. About 2.5 million Romanians and 700,000 Bulgarians are estimated to have moved abroad since the collapse of communism in 1989, limiting any expected influx of people from either country, it says.
It warns that restrictive national rules on the free movement of workers in the EU leads to "the fragmentation of the European idea of maintaining differential treatment on grounds of nationality".
It highlights that member states that impose restrictions could damage their economies by losing out on a valuable pool of skilled labour. While acknowledging that the transitional restrictions are entirely legal, ECAS says they contradict the spirit of the founding EU treaties, and especially articles 12 and 18 on non-discrimination on grounds of nationality and the establishment of EU citizenship.
ECAS notes the State did a major policy U-turn last year by restricting the right to work of Romanians and Bulgarians while allowing nationals from new EU members such as Poland to work. "Differentiating to the detriment of the later entrants definitely sends an unfriendly message to Bulgarian and Romanian nationals who might be well feeling discriminated against on the grounds of nationality," it says. The Government has the right to maintain restrictions on Romanian and Bulgarian workers until December 2013. It must apply to the European Commission to extend the current restrictions.