Iceland opens labor market for Romanians from 2012

Iceland, a country of 319,000 inhabitants, has decided to fully open its labor market to Romanian workers, after a seven-year transition period. Romanians will be able to freely work in Iceland from the beginning of 2012. Iceland's unemployment reaches 5.9 percent in the third quarter of the year, according to its statistics office. The country has a workforce of 171,000 people between 16 and 74 years old.

Meanwhile, Spain has decided to impose restrictions for Romanian workers until 2013, as the country faces the highest unemployment rate in Europe: 21.5 percent in the third quarter of this year. The measure was also due to the fact that many of the Romanians who worked in Spain had become unemployed during the crisis. Earlier this year, UK announced it was planing to keep the restrictions for Romanian workers, as lifting them would have negatively affected the country's labor market. Alongside Romanians, Bulgarians have also been affected by this measure. In a resolution recently adopted by the European Parliament, all EU states should allow Bulgarians and Romanians access to their labor markets by the end of 2011, before the 2013 deadline, which was included in the EU joining treaty. Corina Saceanu, corina@romania-insider.com (photo source: Iceland.is)