Britain to open borders to new EU workers from 2004

Britain said yesterday that it will open its doors to workers from new member states as soon as they join the European Union, breaking ranks with Germany and Austria which will block east European labor for up to seven years. In a move hailed by the Polish government as an important symbolic gesture, Britain's Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, said citizens of new EU states would get the same right to work in Britain as existing EU citizens from the day of their planned accession on May 1, 2004. "The citizens of the new member states should enjoy the same rights as British, French, German and other citizens within the EU," Straw said. He said the decision, unveiled two days before an EU summit in Denmark, was in Britain's economic interests and would help the government direct resources to tackling the "real immigration problems" it faces from a wave of nearly 100,000 asylum seekers a year. "This is a very positive decision, we should treat it as an important and symbolic gesture," Prime Minister Leszek Miller told reporters before a cabinet meeting in Warsaw. Poland, the largest of the applicant countries with three million registered jobless, is battling hard to win good entry terms at the Copenhagen summit which it can sell to a demanding nation in a referendum next year. The candidate countries say the restrictions on their workers make them second-class citizens. In a joint article published in the Financial Times yesterday the leaders of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia called on their peers in the bloc to show leadership. (Reuters) A.Z.