The centre-left government led by former Commission President Romano Prodi is the eighth of the EU's 15 'old' member states to give up the temporary restrictions to workers from eight countries between Estonia and Slovenia.
At the same time, the Italian Council of Ministers passed a decree granting legal status to a total of 517,000 immigrants, most of which could not apply for a residence permit as a result of a quota imposed by the former centre-right wing government led by media magnate Silvio Berlusconi.
As recently as at the end of April 2006, the parting Berlusconi government announced that Italy was going to extend the 'transitory arrangements' barring Eastern-European workers from its labour market by three more years, until May 2009.
The UK, Ireland and Sweden did not restrict access to workers from Eastern Europe in the first place, when those countries joined the EU in 2004; Finland, Spain, Portugal and Greece decided to lift the restrictions after a first two-year period on 1 May 2006; France decided to phase them out over a transitory period over several years. All EU countries will have to lift all existing barriers to the free movement of workers before 1 May 2011.
The Italian decision came one week after the discovery by the Italian police of a camp in the country's southern Puglia region, where 113 Polish nationals were being kept in slave-like conditions, working up to 15 hours a day for 2 euros a day, and being guarded by armed 'kapos' and by dogs.
Polish media report that a number of Polish MEPs have asked the Parliament President Josep Borrell to put the issue on the agenda of the Parliament's plenary debate during the first week of September .
