As of next month, workers from Poland and seven other new EU member states will be able to go to work more easily in the agricultural sector, the domestic shipping branch, slaughterhouses, fish-filleting companies, scientific research and the light engineering industry. The Centre for Work and Income (CWI) will expedite work permits for those branches.

Employers wanting to hire a worker from Poland, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic no longer have to comply with the so-called market test. This means they do not have to first try to recruit a suitable worker from the Netherlands or the old pre May 2004 EU member states. This saves them a lot of time and red tape. At present, it takes 10 weeks on average to be granted a work permit. Once the regulations have been eased, that period will be reduced to two weeks.

The government aims to grant freedom of movement for workers from the new EU countries from 2007, after which they will no longer have to apply for work permits. In the lead-up to full freedom of movement the government plans to phase in quicker and smoother work permit procedures in various sectors.

Some sectors are being opened quicker to the new workers because State Secretary of Social Affairs and Employment Henk van Hoof has concluded that there is a looming shortage of suitable workers in those branches. The market test has been dropped in those sectors but employers still have to meet certain demands e.g. the have to provide adequate housing for the workers from the new EU countries and they have to pay them the same wages as Dutch workers.