Charlemagne Europe's Surprising Labour Flexibility

摘要

By the best guesses of Polish diplomats, a couple of thousand Poles lived in Ireland at the start of 2004, including 200 emigres left from the second world war. Three years later Ireland was home to more than a quarter of a million Poles, according to consular estimates. This would be a startling change anywhere. It has transformed Ireland, a country of 4m which has long thought of itself (in the words of Ruairi Quinn, a Labour Party politician) as "an island off an island off the coast of the continent of Europe". The change had two causes. One was a boom that began in the 1990s. The other was Ireland's enlightened decision to throw open its labour market when eight east European countries joined the European Union in May 2004.