ABSTRACT
The accession of CEE countries to the European Union in 2004 had significant influence on migration processes in this geographical area. A main reason for the shift in mobility patterns was the EU policy on free movement of persons and services, which opened the labour markets of some member states, as well as the large migration potential among the ‘new Europeans’. The latter was a result of labour force surpluses and delays in economic modernisation. Undoubtedly, regardless of the size of the population, Poland represented the biggest migration potential. In the opinion of some experts one to four million people emigrated from Poland after 1 May 2004. The most credible estimation was presented by Grabowska-Lusińska and Okólski (2009), according to whom the net outflow of people was about 1.1 million between 2004 and 2006. Polish post-accession migrants preferred emigrating to countries where labour markets were open for EU citizens, like the United Kingdom and Ireland. In the case of the latter, though, it is not the numbers that are the most striking but the dynamics of the flow.
