Brussels, 14/02/2006 (Agence Europe) - Following the publication of the Commission report on labour mobility in the EU after 2004, EU Member States have until 30 April to inform the Commission of their decision on whether or not to remove national restrictions on the free movement of workers (see EUROPE 9127). Finland and Spain have already signalled their intention to open their labour markets to workers from the new EU Member States on 1st May 2006.
Only the United Kingdom, Sweden and Ireland immediately opened their labour markets to workers from the new EU countries. Of the other EU-15 countries, Finland introduced a transition period for the free movement of workers, though not for services. This can be explained by examining the Finnish labour market, where the registration of workers from outside the country - often as sub-contractors or hired workers - on the labour market is extremely important to guarantee equal treatment for all workers and genuine competition between companies, stressed Finnish Labour Minister Tarja Filatov, in a press release. The Minister said that workers come from the new EU countries as hired workers or independent practitioners, and this leads to a situation where the terms of employment are difficult to supervise. She said that the decision to abandon transitional restrictions would not fully remove the market of hired labour, but would prevent the problem becoming larger.
Last Friday, the tripartite working group from the Finnish Labour Ministry unanimously recommended that Finland lift its national restrictions on the free movement of workers in the EU from 1st may 2006. This recommendation has now been submitted to the government, which will present a report for Parliament to take the final decision to remove the transition period or not, said the press release, which also gave the unanimous contentions of the working group:
1) All registration methods concerning EU citizens will be developed with the aim of improving the statistics on the mobility of EU workers. The registration method will be developed when the Directive on the mobility and residency of EU citizens in other Member States is enforced in Finland.
2) The prerequisites allowed by the Treaties of Accession for the registration of new EU citizens will be clarified and necessary proposals will be made by the end of March. Registration enhances the possibilities of monitoring labour mobility and supervising terms of employment.
3) Increasing the supervision of the terms of employment will continue. Additional resources needed in this type of supervision will be ensured in situations of sub-contracting and hired work, in order to avoid competitive distortions caused by neglected employer obligations.
4) It will not be necessary to restrict the admission of Bulgarian or Romanian citizens to the Finnish labour market ahead of the accession of these two countries to the EU on 1st January 2007.