Romanian minister suggests curb on Irish, UK workers

ROMANIA: Romania's labour minister, Gheorghe Barbu, has suggested imposing restrictions on workers from Ireland and Britain, two countries that will not fully open their labour markets to Romanians and Bulgarians when they join the European Union in January.

Dublin and London angered the Balkan states by refusing to grant their citizens the same freedom to work as they gave people from 10 states that joined the EU in 2004.

Hundreds of thousands of people from those, mostly ex-communist, countries now work in Ireland and Britain, where economists say they have helped fuel growth. But fears of another influx of foreign labour, stoked by lurid tabloid headlines and spreading EU "enlargement fatigue", prompted both countries to abandon their "open door" policy.

"We should consider whether we could impose restrictions on those EU members that have changed their position towards Romania, compared with the 10 states that joined two years ago," Mr Barbu said.

Bucharest insists that a wave of Romanians will not roll through Europe come January, and suggests that most people who want to work in the West have already left. Officials in Sofia say the same about Bulgarians. "We are not afraid to call this discrimination, and it's very difficult for us to accept such treatment," Romanian president Traian Basescu said recently, adding of Britain: "I didn't see them so outraged to have our troops fighting side-by-side with them in Iraq."

Diplomats say threats of retaliation by the Balkan states are empty, however, as neither wants to plunge into a political or trade dispute with its new EU partners, and neither hosts large numbers of Irish and British workers; Mr Barbu said 7,402 foreigners were working legally in Romania, a quarter of them from EU countries.

Come January, Romania will be the second largest eastern European member of the EU, after Poland. But unlike Poland, which struggles with unemployment of about 15 per cent, only about 5 per cent of Romania's 22 million people are officially without work.

Many Romanian businesses already report difficulties finding skilled labour and, with many people from neighbouring Ukraine and Moldova already working further west, employers are looking to recruit in places such as Turkey, China and Pakistan.

Wary of labour shortages that could hamper economic growth, Sweden and Finland, along with seven of the 10 states that joined the EU in 2004, have agreed to let Romanians and Bulgarians work there from next year.