Derek Roland Clark, on behalf of the EFD Group. – Mr President, the Commissioner for Employment says that free movement of workers is a key principle of the single market, which is why, in 2004, only Sweden, Ireland and the UK exerted restrictions on 10 new Member States. The then British Home Secretary Jack Straw now says that opening borders to eastern European immigration was a spectacular mistake, while Mr[nbsp ]Barroso recently admitted that the influx of eastern Europeans was putting pressure on communities and leading to abuses in some cases.

Is realism now appearing? For Croatia, 13 Member States out of 27 will use restrictions, including France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, while Germany and Austria will restrict posted workers. Now, will Croatians join Bulgarians and Romanians in having first call on jobs in preference to third-country nationals, as in the Commissionʼs statement of April last year? But that is discrimination, and I raised this twice in the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs last year and did not receive an answer. I now require a commensurate answer as to why this discrimination continues.