2004 enlargement of the European Union

The "Polish Plumber" cliché adopted by Poland's tourism board to advertise Poland as a tourist destination on the French market. (English translation: "I am staying in Poland, come in large numbers")

As of May 2011, there are no longer any special restrictions on the free movement of citizens of these new member states.

With their original accession to the EU, free movement of people between all 25 states would naturally have applied. However, due to concerns of mass migration from the new members to the old EU-15, some transitional restrictions were put in place. Mobility within the EU-15 (plus Cyprus) and within the new states (minus Cyprus) functioned as normal (although the new states had the right to impose restrictions on travel between them). Between the old and new states, transitional restrictions up to 1 May 2011 could be put in place, and EU workers still had a preferential right over non-EU workers in looking for jobs even if restrictions were placed upon their country. No restrictions were placed on Cyprus or Malta. The following restrictions were put in place by each country;[8]

• Austria and Germany: Restriction on free movement and to provide certain services. Work permits still needed for all countries. In Austria, to be employed the worker needs to have been employed for more than a year in his home country prior to accession. Germany had bilateral quotas which remained in force.
• Cyprus: No restrictions.
• Malta: No restrictions on its workers, but does have the right to migration into the country.
• Netherlands: Initially against restrictions, but tightened up its policies in early 2004 and said it would tighten its policies if more than 22,000 workers arrived per year.
• Finland: 2 years of transitional arrangements where a work permit would be granted only where a Finnish national cannot be found for the job. Does not apply to students, part-time workers, entrepreneurs, people living in Finland for non-work purposes, people who were already living in Finland for a year or people who would be entitled to work anyway if they were from a third country.
• Denmark: Two years where only full-time workers can get a work permit, if they had a residence permit. Workers did not get welfare but restrictions only apply to wage earners (all the EU-10 citizens can set up a business).
• France: Five years of restrictions depending on sector and region. Students, researchers, self-employed and service providers were exempt from the restrictions.
• Spain: Two years.
• Portugal: Two years, annual limit of 6,500.
• Sweden: No restrictions.
• Czech Republic and Slovakia: No restrictions.
• Poland: Reciprocal limits, only British and Irish citizens had free access. Countries with looser or tighter limits face similar limits in Poland.
• Belgium, Greece and Luxembourg: Two years.
• United Kingdom: Welfare restrictions only, need to register though. This decision was controversial: politicians later admitted that they had only decided against barring freedom of movement under the assumption that all of the other EU countries would also impose no restrictions on freedom of movement: in fact only Ireland and Sweden followed suit.[9][10] This decision led to a rise of anti-migrant sentiment, and is credited with inspiring Brexit.[11][12][13]
• Ireland: No restrictions.
• Hungary: Reciprocal limits for seven years.

Despite the fears, migration within the EU concerns less than 2% of the population.[14] However, the migration did cause controversy in those countries which saw a noticeable influx, creating the image of a "Polish Plumber" in the EU, caricaturing the cheap manual labour from A8 countries making an imprint on the rest of the EU. The extent to which E8 immigration generated a lasting public backlash has been debated. Ten years after the enlargement, a study showed that increases in E8 migrants in Western Europe over the last ten years had been accompanied by a more widespread acknowledgement of the economic benefits of immigration.[15] Following the 2007 enlargement, most countries placed restrictions on the new states, including the most open in 2004 (Ireland and the United Kingdom) with only Sweden, Finland and the 2004 members (minus Malta and Hungary).[16] But by April 2008, these restrictions on the eight members had been dropped by all members except Germany and Austria.[17]

Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia became members on 1 May 2004, but some areas of cooperation in the European Union will apply to some of the EU member states at a later date. These are:

• Schengen Area (see Enlargement of the Schengen Area; Cyprus is still not a member of the Schengen Area)
• Eurozone (see Enlargement of the eurozone; Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland are still not members of the Eurozone)

Member countries	Population	Area (km²)	GDP (billion US$)	GDP per capita (US$)	Languages
Cyprus	775,927	9,250	11.681	15,054	Greek Turkish
Czech Republic	10,246,178	78,866	105.248	10,272	Czech
Estonia	1,341,664	45,226	22.384	16,684	Estonian
Hungary	10,032,375	93,030	102.183	10,185	Hungarian
Latvia	2,306,306	64,589	24.826	10,764	Latvian
Lithuania	3,607,899	65,200	31.971	8,861	Lithuanian
Malta	396,851	316	5.097	12,843	English Maltese
Poland	38,580,445	311,904	316.438	8,202	Polish
Slovakia	5,423,567	49,036	42.800	7,810	Slovak
Slovenia	2,011,473	20,273	29.633	14,732	Slovene
Accession countries	74,722,685	737,690	685.123	9,169	10 new
Existing members (2004)	381,781,620	3,367,154	7,711.871	20,200	11
EU25 (2004)	456,504,305 (+19.57%)	4,104,844 (+17.97%)	8,396,994 (+8.88%)	18,394 (−8.94%)	21

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12 years after the enlargement, the EU is still "digesting" the change. The influx of new members has effectively put an end to the Franco-German engine behind the EU, as its relatively newer members, Poland and Sweden, set the policy agenda, for example Eastern Partnership. Despite fears of paralysis, the decision making process has not been hampered by the new membership and if anything the legislative output of the institutions has increased, however justice and home affairs (which operates by unanimity) has suffered. In 2009 the Commission sees the enlargement as a success, however until the enlargement is fully accepted by the public future enlargements may be slow in coming.[17] In 2012 data published by the Guardian shows that that process is complete.[18]

The internal impact has also been relevant. The arrival of additional members has put an additional stress on the governance of the Institutions, and increased significantly overheads (for example, through the multiplication of official languages). Furthermore, there is a division of staff, since the very same day of the enlargement was chosen to enact an in-depth reform of the Staff Regulation, which was intended to bring significant savings in administrative costs. As a result, employment conditions (career & retirement perspectives) worsened for officials recruited after that date. Since by definition officials of the "new" Member States were recruited after the enlargement, these new conditions affected all of them (although they also affect nationals of the former 15 Member States who have been recruited after 1 May 2004).

Before the 2004 enlargement, the EU had twelve treaty languages: Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Irish, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish. However, due to the 2004 enlargement, nine new official languages were added: Polish, Czech, Slovak, Slovene, Hungarian, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian and Maltese.

A 2007 study in the journal Post-Soviet Affairs argued that the 2004 enlargement of the EU contributed to the consolidation of democracy in the new member states.[19] In 2009, Freie Universität Berlin political scientist Thomas Risse wrote, "there is a consensus in the literature on Eastern Europe that the EU membership perspective had a huge anchoring effects for the new democracies."[20]

• Czech Republic and the euro
• Hungary and the euro
• Poland and the euro
• 1973 enlargement of the European Communities
• 1981 enlargement of the European Communities
• 1986 enlargement of the European Communities
• 1995 enlargement of the European Union
• 2007 enlargement of the European Union
• 2013 enlargement of the European Union

• Poland's way to EU