European Diary:When Ondrej Manda arrived in Dublin just before EU enlargement in May 2004 he held out high hopes for life in Ireland.
A sociology and economics graduate from the Czech Republic, he had heard about labour shortages in the Republic and was eager to put his skills to the test in a job that would offer good experience for his future career at home. "I joined an English school and began working part-time, and then when the Czech Republic joined the EU and I was legally allowed to work full-time, I began to look for a proper job," says Manda.
"I applied for lots of jobs, but most firms didn't reply to me and I couldn't find anything suitable, even in pretty low-level administration positions."
Like many of the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers attracted to Ireland and Britain since 2004 he was eventually forced to take a job below his skill levels.
"I ended up working as an operator in a mobile phone factory, which was horribly boring. So I went home . . . I think there are social barriers, and of course firms give Irish people jobs ahead of foreigners," says Manda, who attended a seminar in Brussels last week organised by the citizens' rights group European Citizen Action Service.
At the seminar migrant workers from different countries, ages and economic groups presented their experience of working within the EU. Listening to the stories recounted by Poles, Czechs, Irish, English and French people about their time working abroad, the gap soon became clear between the principles in the EU treaties, which guarantee the freedom to work abroad, and what actually happens on the ground in many EU states.
Take the experience of Eve Geddie, an Irish graduate with a degree in human rights. When she tried to register with a local authority in Brussels, she was treated with suspicion by officials and faced unfriendly and humiliating conduct.
She was interrogated in a room full of people by a local authority official about the reason for the absence of her father's name from her birth certificate. Issuance of her residence card was delayed, without which employment agencies refused to register her and she couldn't get a job.
"I shudder to think what reception non-EU citizens or those with social problems or literacy difficulties receive from these agencies," says Geddie.
The seminar concluded that legislation protecting migrants is not only applied unevenly from one member state to another, but also between local authorities within countries. In the application of the rules there is often a lot of red tape, and while information and advice are available, it often remains scattered and fails to reach migrants at a lower level.
Many of the 14 personal stories recounted highlighted insufficient preparation on the part of officials, who are the first point of contact for citizens moving abroad.
This seems particularly acute in countries such as Ireland, which has experienced a large influx of foreign workers from countries such as Poland, Latvia and Lithuania.
Indeed, many of the first wave of arrivals from the new member states often provide the support networks for more recent arrivals, according to Agata Szarek, a Polish national, who after arriving in Ireland a few years back, recently set up a business in Ballybofey, Co Donegal.
"I'm lucky I speak good English and I wouldn't let anyone treat me in a bad way. But lots of people have trouble applying for their PPS numbers or welfare schemes," says Szarek, who has turned her grocer's shop into an unofficial advice bureau for Poles. "I keep the official forms in my shop for people and help them to fill them in," she says.
But the problems are not confined to the new wave of migrants from central Europe; nor do they end when a person returns home after a period working abroad.
For example, difficulties surfaced for Christophe Audicq only when he returned to France after 10 years spent working in financial services in London in the 1990s.
"My language skills were not valued nor my experience.
"Anglo-Saxon culture values pragmatism, meritocracy and flexibility, but these are three points missing in France.
"So when I visited the local employment agency on my return to France they could find no suitable openings for my profile," says Audicq, who also raised the delicate issue of the failure of EU states to recognise qualifications earned in another.
The host of administrative and cultural barriers facing migrants is probably one of the chief reasons working across borders is not proving popular.
Just 4 per cent of Europeans have moved to work in another member state at least once in their life, according to a recent Eurobarometer survey, while 3 per cent have moved outside the EU.
This is despite the survey showing that 53 per cent of EU citizens cite the freedom to travel and work in other European states as one of the key benefits provided by the union.