The free movement of workers in an enlarged european union: Institutional underpinnings of economic adjustment

The eastern enlargements of the European Union (EU) in 2004, 2007 and 2013 created a labor market with more than half a billion people, third only to India and China in terms of population size and matched only by the United States in economic size. Along with the free movement of capital, goods and services, the acquis communautaire, basic legislation of the EU, also legally guarantee the free movement of people within the EU’s vast internal market. Owing to these liberalizations, and despite temporary transitional arrangements applied by some old member states towards citizens from new member states (NMSs), the EU witnessed a substantial east–west movement of people in the years following the eastern enlargements. The number of citizens in the old member states from the member states that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007 grew from about two million in 2004 to almost five million in 2009, signifying an increase from less than 0.5 to 1.2 and of the EU15 total population in just 5 years (Holland et al. 2011).