Twenty-six-year-old Romanian bartender Raul Corduneanu gave in to his Slovak girlfriend's demand that the two of them move to Prague from their home in Vatra Dornei, a small mountain town tucked in north Romania. With his recent work experience in the United States, it wasn't difficult for Corduneanu to find potential job opportunities.

"I sent out my CV to a few companies and received mostly positive responses," he said. "They are interested in giving me a job starting in January."

But whether Corduneanu can actually work in Prague is not up to him, or his employer.

Corduneanu will be eligible to start mixing drinks here Jan. 1, when Romanians and Bulgarians join the European Union. In theory, this means free access to labor markets in the 25 EU member states, including the Czech Republic.

In practice, however, Corduneanu and other job seekers from the two new member states will have to wait. The Cabinet has yet to decide on whether to fully open the labor market.

Analysts expect the Cabinet to announce its decision sometime this month. Government officials are concerned that excluding Romanians and Bulgarians from the labor market would give hesitant West European countries another excuse to exclude Czech workers from theirs.

Labor and Social Affairs Minister Petr Nečas has spent several months lobbying hard for the free flow of workers from the two countries.

"We intend to liberalize EU labor markets," he said. "We have kept a strong negotiating position because we ourselves have faced restricted access to some markets."

When the Czech Republic joined the EU in 2004, four countries immediately opened up their labor markets. Other countries denied Czechs free access to work within their borders amid fears that low-earning immigrants would take jobs from their own citizens.

The Czechs cried foul. Now, less than three years after its accession, the Czech Republic finds the shoe on the other foot.

The government was supposed to reveal its decision in late November, but postponed the announcement pending further analysis from Nečas' ministry of the overall impact the influx of the Romanian and Bulgarian workers.

"We need to make sure that we'll have the option to employ protective measures if needed," Nečas said. "Also, we want to see what other EU member states decide."

Unlikely exodus

So far, only seven EU member states, mainly East European countries, have declared their intention to enable workers from the two new member states immediate labor access.

Others, including the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, have announced that they will implement a three-year transitional period, in which they can keep the doors to their labor markets closed to new member states.

This is similar to what the Czech Republic faces: Nine EU countries currently prevent Czechs from freely working within their borders.

Corduneanu said that fears of a mass invasion from Romania and Bulgaria stems more from misconception than from substantial economic data.

Lucian Popa, a manager at the Prague-based telemarketing company Marcus Evans, said no such influx is likely.

"The Czech Republic need not worry," he said. "Conditions here are not that much better that a big amount of people would rush to work here."

There are currently 1,929 Bulgarians and 1,215 Romanians working legally in the Czech Republic.

Accession could kill the months of paperwork currently needed for work in the EU. Popa had one such arduous experience before taking his job in Prague six months ago.

"I applied through the Czech Embassy in Bratislava, and it took four months for me to get all the required papers," Popa said. "There was no way to speed up the process, and when I called the embassy to find out about my application's status, no one was able to give me any information. I had to call again and again."

Foreigners wanted

The need for foreign workers in the Czech Republic is on the rise.

Although there are already more than 180,000 legal foreign workers in this country, plus tens of thousands of illegal workers, there are still about 100,000 vacancies for mostly manual work that Czechs are not interested in, according to the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry.

"Employers are facing increasing problems hiring people, and there are still more and more vacancies for foreigners," said Petra Rössleová, business director of Trenkwalder Kappa People recruitment agency. "The Romanians and the Bulgarians could help the labor market."

The Labor and Social Affairs Ministry predicts that the country will be in need of as many as 400,000 workers 25 years from now.

The country lost many highly qualified experts who left to work elsewhere after the country joined the EU, and the government attempts to fill the gap.