British PM David Cameron has said publicly that he does not believe large numbers of Romanians and Bulgarians will move to Britain next year when transitional controls on the two EU Member States are lifted. While out on campaign for local elections, the British PM contrasted the situation with Romania and Bulgaria with that of Poland, for which the UK did not apply transitional controls when the country joined the EU in 2004.

“This time because the transitional controls have been put in, we are not lifting the restrictions on Romania and Bulgaria alone, it’s happening right across Europe. ... So I don’t think we’ll have anything like the situation we had in the Polish situation,” said PM David Cameron, quoted by British newspaper the Daily Mail. Cameron was referring to the high levels of immigration from Poland that followed the country's EU accession. Britain was the only large, Western European economies not to apply transitional controls, and with the country's economy growing at the time and labor shortages, large numbers of Poles went to the UK.

The British government has refused to give official estimates of immigration from Romania and Bulgaria, due to fears of getting the numbers wrong, according to the British press. Thus, Cameron's comments are among the few official government predictions on potential Bulgarian and Romanian immigration to the UK.

Liam Lever, liam@romania-insider.com