Finland, Spain, Portugal to accept new EU member state workers

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The free movement of workers within the European Union supports the development of Europe, Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said after meeting with his Czech counterpart Jiri Paroubek (senior governing Social Democrats, CSSD) in Prague this week.

The Finnish government has decided that Finland will lift the restrictions on new EU-member states to its labour market as of this May.

So far, only Britain, Ireland and Sweden have opened their labour markets for people from the new EU member states. On Monday, Portugal announced that it will lift the restrictions on labour force new EU countries and Spain is preparing a similar step.

On the other hand, Germany and Austria will continue to protect their labour markets.

According to Vanhanen, all EU countries should have similar rights. He said that he considered the movement of educated and professionally trained people of key importance.