BULGARIA: Bulgarian prime minister Sergei Stanishev has urged the Government not to place restrictions on the free movement of its workers when it joins the EU.
Speaking ahead of a critical decision tomorrow on Bulgaria and Romania's readiness to join the EU in January 2007, Mr Stainshev urged Ireland to maintain its policy of keeping open borders with all new members of the bloc.
"If you want to live in a common union you have to open your labour market. But there will be no strong immigration pressure from Bulgaria, I am quite confident about that," Mr Stanishev told The Irish Times.
"Don't expect hundreds and thousands of Bulgarians coming to Ireland next year. It will simply not happen," he said. "After all, the population of Bulgaria is not that big to send too many immigrants. So I don't expect problems for Ireland in particular or the other countries in the EU."
Responding to media reports that the Government is considering placing restrictions on workers from Bulgaria and Romania, Mr Stanishev said opinion polls showed that the number of people in Bulgaria expressing an interest in working abroad is falling.
More than one million people have migrated from Bulgaria since 1990, when the state emerged from a period of 44 years of communist rule. This has caused its population to drop from about 8.9 million people in 1990 to an estimated 7.4 million in 2006.
But Mr Stanishev said that most of the Bulgarians who wanted to live and work abroad were already doing so and he predicted no mass exodus when it joined the EU.
"There is a community of 150,000 Bulgarians in Spain and approximately the same number in Greece and 70,000-plus Bulgarians in Italy, and most of those quite well integrated," he said.
"I believe it [open borders] will not make harm for you ."
Mr Stanishev said Bulgaria did not want its people to leave to work elsewhere. Steady economic growth of 5 per cent per year was changing conditions, he said.
"We want to create the conditions for them to work and receive good salaries and to establish families and develop here in our country and our membership of the EU will help in this goal," he said.
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said last week he would like to see what other EU states do in relation to opening their borders to workers from Bulgaria and Romania before making a decision for Ireland.
Ireland was one of three countries that did not place restrictions on workers from the eight central European states that joined the EU in May 2004. It has experienced strong migration flows of 200,000 workers since.
The European Commission will issue an eagerly awaited monitoring report on Romania and Bulgaria's readiness to join the EU tomorrow.
This was initially meant to include a final recommendation on whether both states should join in January 2007 or face a one-year postponement in order to facilitate more time for reform.
However, it is now expected that the report will recommend making another assessment in the autumn to see if Bulgaria has accelerated its fight against organised crime and made sufficient progress concerning the reform of its judiciary.