Brussels, 30/04/2007 (Agence Europe) - This Tuesday 1 May, the Netherlands is officially to open its employment market to the states which joined the EU on 1 May 2004, which are the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia. Malta and Cyprus are not concerned, for reasons laid out in the report published by the European Commission on 11 January 2007, which are that (1) Cyprus's Treaty of Accession contains no restrictions on freedom of movement of workers; (2) for Malta, there exists only a possibility of invoking a safeguard clause (see EUROPE 9342, also for the advantages of freedom of movement and the complete list of transitional provisions on this matter).
The opening up of the Dutch employment market was announced in mid-April by Dutch Minister for Social Affairs, Piet Hein Donner, in a letter sent to his government on 6 April (see EUROPE 9403). This decision of the Netherlands means that nine countries of the EU 15, or the majority of them, have lifted their restrictions on the entry of workers from Central and Eastern Europe onto their employment market. This means that workers are now able to move freely in 21 of the 27 member states of the EU. (gb)