Catherwood LibraryILR School

France will lift restrictions starting in July on workers from eight formerly communist countries that joined the European Union in 2004, President Nicolas Sarkozy said Wednesday. "It is time for France to lift the last restrictions on the freedom of movement of Polish workers and workers from the other countries that joined the EU in 2004," Sarkozy said in a half-hour address to both houses of Poland's parliament. "So I tell you that France will lift all the restrictions by July 1," when France takes over the EU's rotating presidency, he said. Amid fears of a flood of cheap labor, citizens of the new European Union members were not initially allowed to seek jobs without restriction in France and many other long-standing Western member countries when they first joined.