Briefing: Immigration from Bulgaria and Romania

What’s changing?

Bulgaria and Romania joined the European Union on 1 January 2007. This gave their citizens the freedom to travel unrestricted within the EU, but countries were allowed to impose transitional controls on their freedom to work for up to seven years. In 2004, when eight other east European countries (the ‘A8’) joined the EU, the Labour government decided not to impose such restrictions, but this time they did. Those controls must be lifted by 1 January 2014.

What are the transitional controls?

At the moment, Bulgarian and Romanian citizens can only come to work in the UK if they have a permit and: they work in the agriculture or food processing sectors — the number of such workers is capped at 21,250 a year and they only have the right to work for up to six months; they have been recruited for a skilled job for which they are qualified and no suitable British candidate can be found; they have a ‘particularly high level of skills and experience’; they are studying in the UK and work part-time for up to 20 hours a week.