Knock, knock. "The plumber!"

The image of the appealing young Polish plumber, toolbag slung across his shoulders, coming to offer his services in France, sowed panic during the referendum on the European constitution in May 2005. But France needs bricklayers and concrete pourers, boiler-makers and sheet-metal workers, travelling salesmen and maintenance agents.

France is allowing members of the eight EU states that joined in 2004 (Poland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia) to work in 62 occupations identified as suffering from a labour shortage. This right was also granted to the Bulgarians and Romanians as soon as they joined the EU, in January, whereas the Poles, Hungarians and Czechs had to wait two years.

The challenge for France over the coming months remains that of taking in European job seekers without causing anger among French nationals.

Great Britain - after opening its arms to several million Eastern European workers over recent years - is seeking to stem the flow of new arrivals, France is opening up a previously very protected labour market writes Marie-Christine Tabet in Le Figaro, (wich by the way has a very atractive and useful version in english)

In the United Kingdom, the mass arrival of Poles is causing tension. Many questions remain unanswered. Arriving in the middle of a housing crisis, will they find housing or swell the ranks of the homeless?

After the enlargment of 2004, 565,000 people went to live to UK for at least a year during the course of 2005, said the Office for National Statistics to AP.