However persistent the European Commission's demands for uniform labour-market treatment of all EU citizens, the red tape between national labourmarkets remains frustratingly thick.
The east European economies, for all their faults, have shown more flexibility in both labourmarkets and in what they produce than have many older EU members.
The EU's eastward enlargement in 2004 brought a huge wave of East Europeans to the UK, at a time when only two other EU countries - Sweden and the Republic of Ireland - were allowing unrestricted access to their labourmarkets.