An essential aspect of the EU enlargement of 2004 is the consequent liberalisation of the labour and service sectors of the EU. Based on various forecasts about migration potentials in the »new« member states, in several of the »old« member states fears arose about a workforce inflow. Therefore, some EU member states (such as Austria) decided in favour of a temporary protection of their national labour markets. The article describes methodology and some selected results of the LAMO (Labour Market Monitoring) project, which was designed to observe regularly the labour market in the border regions of Austria, the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. Central for the analysis is the focus of the labour migration potential on Austria as a country of destination. It is claimed that the »active« migration potential, contrary to the »passive« migration potential, appears to be relatively small.

Free movement of labour EU enlargement Migration potentials Labour market monitoring labour migration

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