Bulgarian and Romanian workers are generally lower qualified than those in other European Union member-states, head of the unit Employment Services and Mobility at the European Commission Johan Ten Geuzendam said.

The European Union's labour market has four million vacancies, qualifications of the unemployed continues to be relatively high while average unemployment level in the EU is eight per cent.

We consider mobility to be vital for the growth of the European labour market, Ten Geuzendam said as quoted by Focus news agency. For the European Labour days 2007, between 24 and 29 September, he was visiting Bulgaria's Bansko.

Ten Geuzendam said that research of European labour force showed that there are 20 million migrant workers in the European labour market, mostly from outside the EU.

One million of these workers were from countries which joined the EU after 2004, among them were 220 000 Bulgarians and 850 000 Romanians.

He said these workers typically were of a younger age, they would travel to a country to work for less then a year and then return to their homeland.

Ten Geuzendam said there is a qualification difference between the new countries of the EU and the old. Workers in the older countries are usually higher qualified, up to 35 years old and not married. Workers from the new EU-member-states , including Bulgaria and Romania, were generally lower qualified. As a result, migrant workers from these countries would often look for low-qualified work when working abroad.

At the same time Ten Geuzendam pointed out there was a risk of a "brain-drain" for countries like Bulgaria and Romania. He said that the EC had created a plan for mobility for the period 2007-2010.

The programme intended to show the benefits of mobility of labour, not only for the economy of a country, but for all involved.