A quote from EUobserver, 20 January 2006

Most EU countries except the UK, Ireland, Sweden, Spain and Finland are planning to keep their labour markets closed off to new member states until 2009 under the terms of the accession treaties. The legislation means, for example, that a Congolese national living in Belgium since 2000 would have the right to work there, while a Pole living in Belgium for an equal amount of time, would not. The European Commission called the discrepancy a “complexity”, noting that the so-called third country national directive was drafted and passed before the May 2004 round of enlargement.