Access Investments-European Union- ROMANIA

At least 2.1 million Romanians work in EU member states, most of them in Italy, Spain and Germany; this is the first official figure released by European Commission representatives. Austria and Germany will open their labour market to Eastern Europeans on May 1, but not to Romanians and Bulgarians, who will have to wait until early 2014. Currently, in Romania no institution has a clear record on the number of Romanians working abroad, although several organisations have tried to monitor the migration of domestic workforce to the West in recent years. "Member states' statistical data and the results of polls carried out on the labour market show that in early 2010 almost 2.5 million Romanian and Bulgarian citizens worked in 15 EU countries. Of them, 2.1 million people are Romanians, most of whom working in Italy (890,000), Spain (825,000) and Germany (110,000)," Cristina Arigho, a spokesperson with the European Commission's employment, social affairs and equal opportunities, told ZF.