EU praises Britain’s ‘open doors’ policy

OTHER Western European countries have been urged to follow Britain’s example and open their labour markets to workers from Eastern Europe.

The European Commission said that Britain’s economy had benefited from the influx of new workers since EU enlargement in 2004.

Britain was one of only three countries — the others are the Irish Republic and Sweden — that allowed Eastern Europeans full access to their labour markets. All other countries put up various restrictions out of fear that native employees would be undermined by a flood of cheap workers from the former communist countries, epitomised in France by the “Polish plumber”.

Vladimir Spidla, the Employment Commissioner and former Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, dismissed these fears, declaring that the flow of workers to Britain and Ireland had been too small to displace native workers; rather it had boosted economic growth. Individual countries and Europe as a whole had benefited, he said. The Commission’s report said: “There was no evidence of a surge in either numbers of workers or welfare expenditure following enlargement.” It said that ,the proportion of workers from Eastern Europe in the old EU had tripled since enlargement, but only from 0.1 per cent of the workforce to 0.3 per cent.