Word: britain
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...east, the toughest question facing its older members is whether to open labor markets. Among ordinary Europeans, opposition to enlargement has focused on the fear of losing jobs and the impact on expensive social welfare systems. (Despite their positive experience with Poland and other Eastern countries, both Britain and Ireland decided to maintain labor restrictions on Romania and Bulgaria for the time being.) For the moment, countries such as Germany and France are maintaining restrictions on labor from new member states - E.U. law permits them to do so until 2011 - but some experts are beginning to question the wisdom...
...interest. Already Finland, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain have decided to follow suit and open their markets to the eight new members from Eastern and Central Europe who joined the E.U. in 2004. France, too, has eased some restrictions. All would do well to study the details of how Britain and Ireland coped. While granting admission to all workers, both nations restricted migrants' access to welfare, thus pre-empting claims that folks were coming as "welfare tourists" to leech off the system. At the same time, most of the new migrants are single, which means that more people are paying...
...success, the new migration did not start out all that well. In fact, had London and Dublin realized from the start just how many Poles and other East Europeans intended to migrate, they might not have opened their markets in the first place. Government economists in Britain had expected no more than 15,000 migrant laborers each year from the new E.U. countries; in Ireland 10,000 were predicted. In fact, 579,000 came to Britain in the first two years, more than one-half of them from Poland, and over 300,000 from Eastern Europe to Ireland. Low-cost...
...there significant signs of all this slowing down. Budget flights from Poland and other countries in Eastern Europe to Britain and Ireland are still full with young men and women ready to sample a new life. In addition to Chudzicka's TV show, Ireland alone boasts six Polish newspapers, two radio programs and at least a dozen Polish websites. Poles can hear Mass in their native tongue in 100 places of worship across Ireland; the community was just granted its own cathedral, a stone's throw from Dublin Castle, which has around 2,000 worshippers every Sunday...
...paying their bills. "I couldn't plan an expansion," Wasilewski recalls. "I had the money, but only on paper." Around the same time, a contract came up to apply interior cladding to a high-rise at London's Canary Wharf. He took it. Wasilewski then moved his family to Britain and, in 2004, invested in two small stoneware companies. He has not looked back. Turnover has doubled in the past three years. Instead of struggling to make his business thrive, Wasilewski now employs about 50 workers, most of them, like him, from Poland. Wasilewski hopes to return to his homeland...