No EU boogeymen have crept through Ireland’s open door

EUROPE’s big bang of just one year ago has turned into the low hum of business as usual.

The fireworks, the poetry, the Irish welcome on the lawns of the Phoenix Park last May 1 marked the birth of the world's biggest trading bloc with close to half a billion people.

The fears of mass immigration, the loss of business and cultural diversity have proved largely unfounded so far.

But having 10 new members join the comfortable club of 15 has had an impact and will continue to colour and change the European Union, economically, culturally and politically.

Ireland was the ideal host for enlargement day. The country is the one the newcomers most closely identified with as it had been poor for so long but had recently become the EU's success story.

Everywhere people in the former eastern-bloc countries saw Ireland as their ideal. From Polish farmers to Czech industrialists, Ireland was proof that they could achieve the near impossible.

A year later, they are well on the way to achieving their goal, though it could take just as long as it took Ireland to get there.

But so far the figures speak for themselves. Latvia has grown by 8.5% in 2004, the highest rate in the EU where the average is a meagre 2.4%.

Most of the other newcomers are experiencing growth of over 5% while Ireland heads the rest with close to 4% growth.

Ireland was one of just three of the EU 15 that opened its doors to workers from the new member states, giving them the freedom to come and work in the country.

It was carefully controlled with the number of work permits available to non-EU nationals reduced. As in Britain, the workers from the new 10 proved to be much needed, especially in the catering and hotel business.

Even the fears of "benefit shopping" have not materialised and those from the poorer new members have stayed at home rather than seek dole or health treatment in Sweden the only country to open its doors without any reservations.

The reason there has been no big-bang effect is that since many of these countries got their independence from Russia in the early 1990s, they have been in transition, moving closer to the market economies of the rest of Europe.

The EU-15 pumped €3 billion a year from 2000 to accession into the new member states to help them upgrade their government, business and infrastructure.

During the last year alone over €6bn has been paid to the 10 new members however they contributed more than half this sum, €3.2bn, themselves through their contributions to the EU's budget.

Commissioner for Regional Policy, Danuta Hubner, who is Polish, says the big fear that countries could not absorb and properly use all this new money is being overcome.

The result is both good and bad. Inflation is higher than in the EU 15 but the level of investment is also increasing.

Companies from old Europe have been investing slowly but steadily over the past 10 years in the former Soviet countries as economic and political stability increase.

However the sums are still considerably less than the amount of investment money that flows into Ireland and only a fraction of the total of €156bn in 2004 that flowed between the EU 15 themselves.

In the past year the EU 15 invested €13.8bn in the 10 almost double the 2003 figure. Ireland has been a prime mover in this as the Czech deputy finance minister, Martin Jahn noted. As the former head of his country's industrial development authority based on Ireland's IDA, he closely modelled much of its policy on Ireland's.

However, the biggest changes are taking place on the borders of the new and old EU with Austrians investing in their neighbours in Slovenia and Hungary; Germany in Poland and Finland in Estonia.

One of the attractions is the lower wages in these countries where they are around 5 an hour.

One of the biggest concerns before enlargement was the effect all these millions of poor farmers would have on the Union. In line with what happened in Ireland, many of them are expected not to survive.