Bulgaria Counters Netherlands over Job Seekers

Totyu Mladenov, Bulgaria's Social Minister, has sent a letter to his Dutch counterpart, Henk Kamp, disagreeing with the latter's initiative to kick Bulgarian workers out of his country's labor market.

Bulgarian and Romanian workers will be no longer welcome to the Dutch labor market as proposed by Kamp, the Dutch press recently reported. Starting July 1 2011, Bulgarians and Romanians as well as foreigners from outside the EU will only be granted a work permit in the Netherlands under "exceptional cases," as the Dutch parliament will reportedly back Kemp's proposal.

" I value the Netherlands' intention to guarantee the rights of its workers from other EU member states and sanction the violators according to the acting EU legislation as far as citizenship, non-discrimination and the right of free movement are concerned," Mladenov writes.

" However, I would like to point out that, according to Bulgaria and Romania's EU accession treaty, the member states which have chosen to apply a transitional period for the Bulgarian workers' access to their labor market, should clearly distinguish between the access rights of non-EU citizens and citizens of those states they have applied the transitional period for," the Minister argues.

Mladenov underlines that EU Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, Laszlo Andor, has stated that restricting the free movement of Bulgarians and Romanians harms the good functioning of the bloc's common market.

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