As of 1 May work­ers from eight Cen­tral and East Euro­pe­an coun­tries that joined the EU in 2004 - Poland, Hun­ga­ry, Slo­va­kia, Czech Repub­lic, Slo­ve­nia, Esto­nia, Lat­via and Lith­u­a­nia, were grant­ed the right to work in Ger­ma­ny and Aus­tria. For Bul­gar­ia and Roma­nia, which joined the EU in 2007, the tran­si­tion­al peri­od will last until the end of 2013.

The two Ger­man-speak­ing coun­tries put off open­ing their bor­ders to east Euro­pe­an work­ers until the last pos­si­ble minute, but the move has final­ly estab­lished a sin­gle EU labour mar­ket, allow­ing labour resour­ces to trans­fer more smooth­ly among Mem­ber States.

Speak­ing at a labour mar­ket con­fer­ence in Buda­pest, Las­zlo Andor, EU Com­mis­sion­er for Employ­ment, Social Affairs and Inclu­sion wel­comed the end of the tran­si­tion­al peri­od. "The remov­al of these final obsta­cles for work­ers from the EU-8 is a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for each indi­vid­u­al but also for the EU as a whole. Mobil­i­ty is a key driv­er for employ­ment growth and in coun­tries like Ger­ma­ny and Aus­tria it will help fill seri­ous skills gaps and job vacan­cies", EC press office quot­ed Andor as say­ing.

The Euro­pe­an Com­mis­sion expects that the open­ing of labour mar­kets from 1 May on will lead to tan­gi­ble immi­gra­tion. "We expect that fol­low­ing the open­ing of the labour mar­ket in Ger­ma­ny over the next four years approx­i­mate­ly 100,000 work­ers per year will arrive there. Approx­i­mate­ly half of them will be from Poland," Com­mis­sion­er Las­zlo Andor explained  in an inter­view for Die Welt. The com­ing of cen­tral and east Euro­pe­an work­ers will help reduce labour short­a­ges in key indus­tri­al sec­tors and indus­tries in the serv­i­ces sec­tor, the Com­mis­sion­er said. Fur­ther­more, accord­ing to him, the work on the black mar­ket and the seem­ing inde­pend­ence will decrease. "All this will lead to more pros­per­i­ty and fur­ther 0.3% year­ly eco­nom­ic growth in Ger­ma­ny," Andor said.

As a result, many Poles, Czechs and Hun­ga­ri­ans are in no hur­ry to rush in because they have already had ample time to try their luck in the West, said Klaus Zim­mer­mann, head of the Insti­tute for the Study of Labour in the west­ern Ger­man city of Bonn.

Pol­ish Labour Min­is­ter Jol­an­ta Fedak said that War­saw "does not expect an exo­dus", a pre­dic­tion shared by her coun­ter­parts in Buda­pest, Ljubl­jana and Pra­gue, quot­ed by AP.

Joach­im Moe­ller, direct­or of the IAB research insti­tute at Ger­ma­ny's Fed­er­al Labour Agen­cy, speak­ing for AP said it was dif­fi­cult to esti­mate how many east Euro­pe­ans were now work­ing off the books. But he said that he expect­ed between 100,000 and 140,000 new arriv­als each year in the short term with a drop-off expect­ed aft­er that. In the same peri­od, the gov­ern­ment esti­mates 200,000 Ger­man employ­ees will leave the labour mar­ket annu­al­ly. In Aus­tria, the Labour Min­is­try is count­ing on between 40,000 and 50,000 peo­ple in the next two years.

Com­mis­sion­er Las­zlo Andor does not expect a major impact of immi­gra­tion on the devel­op­ment of wages and unem­ploy­ment. "Much more impor­tant is that GDP growth will increase due to immi­gra­tion and con­se­quent­ly new jobs may arise.