Dealing with Immigration in the Context of EU Enlargement: the Case of Transitional Provisions

This analysis addresses the issue of immigration in the context of the European Union enlargement. Focusing on the use of transitional provisions, it attempts to explain why and when EU leaders give workers from new member countries access to their labor market. Building on the observation that EU leaders seem not to use provisions in the spirit of the law, I gauge the importance of domestic political stakes in the use of those provisions. The empirical results suggest that although EU leaders implement and repeal provisions based on economic circumstances, political factors do intervene in the decision-making process. However, it remains uncertain whether those political factors are institutional or purely electoral.