From May 2011, citizens from the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia will have full right to work in any Member State.

All workers from the countries that joined the EU in 2004 will now be able to take up employment freely in those Member States where labour market restrictions have been in place until the end of the seven year transitional period. Commission's reports from 2006 and 2008 found that mobile workers from these countries have had an overwhelmingly positive impact on Member States' economies and have not led to serious disturbances on their labour markets. On the contrary, these workers have made a significant contribution to sustained economic growth.

The 2003 Accession Treaty allowed Member States to restrict during a seven-year transitional period the right of workers from 8 of the 10 countries that joined the EU in 2004 (EU-8) to freely move to another Member State to work (namely Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia).

This transitional arrangement had as main goal to allow Member States to gradually introduce free movement step-by-step during this period, to avoid labour market disturbances by a sudden inflow of workers following accession to the EU. Member States could, however, open their labour markets at any stage.

During the transitional period, there have been three phases in order to open the market progressively. On the first one, 3 Member States (Ireland, UK and Sweden) opened their labour markets from the beginning on 1 May 2004 while the remaining 12 restricted access to their labour markets. In turn, 3 of the EU-8 Member States (Hungary, Poland and Slovenia) used reciprocal measures and restricted access to their labour markets for nationals from those Member States that restricted labour market access for their nationals. The third and last one will be applied until end of April.