Brussels, 25/09/2007 (Agence Europe) -European Commissioner for Social Affairs Vladimir Spidla welcomed the decision of the Luxembourg and German governments to open their labour markets up to nationals from central and eastern European countries. Last Friday Luxembourg announced that it was going to open up all the sectors of its labour market to nationals from the eight central and eastern European countries that became members of the European Union on 1st May 2004: Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia. A few days earlier, the German government had done the same thing but had limited the opening up to specialist workers - those working, for example, in construction and technology from the then new member states (the eight mentioned above as well as Bulgaria and Romania). This is a step forward but Germany, Austria, Belgium, France and Denmark remain the only member states of the EU15 applying restrictions in certain sectors. Following on from the United Kingdom, Ireland and Sweden (which totally opened up their labour markets on 1 May 2004), Finland, Spain, Portugal and Greece lifted all restrictions in May 2006. Italy followed suit in July 2006 and the Netherlands in May 2007 (EUROPE 9478). (gb)