[Atlantic Bridge]

At worst we will "lose" 0.5 million people, which can be easily replaced by people from Ukraine, Belarus or countries, which are going to join EU and there's no chance that continental old EU will open their markets for them - btw articles like this one shows that even UK and Ireland rather won't do that.

We will see. Do not forget that old continental Europe has a fundamental problem with its reproduction rate. We have reason to be open. Trossingen, the town were I live is i.e. already full of young Ukrainians and Russians. The violin teacher of my eldest son come from the Ukraine, the piano teacher of my other (middle) son comes from Russia and the family of the best friend of my youngest son is from Poland. You see - European future already started in Germany.

:-)

[Grzegorz 246]

"Trossingen, the town were I live is i.e. already full of young Ukrainians and Russians."

Maybe, but If most of old EU didn't open their labor markets for "2004 members" and some, including yours still keep them closed then It's hard to believe that in near future they will open them for "2007 members", not to mention Ukraine or others. Some of these people obviously work and live in the Western Europe, you may always find some way to do It, but that's a limited number of them. Belarus, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Georgia, Armenia and a few others - that's over 100 million people, not to mention in fact unlimited human resources outside of Europe, but that I would like to avoid. The problem in Poland is low level of economical development, not quality or number of workforce, according to IMF, World Bank, OECD and anything else, GDP growth should be avg. +5% a year for the next 5-6 years, so at least partly this problem is going to be solved and people go where they smell the money.