Intra-EU Labour Mobility and the Welfare State 81 the potential shock each country may undergo from the lifting of labour market restrictions is more important to account for in our model. Table 4.5 presents the years in which labour migration restrictions for each group of new member state countries were lifted by each EU country in our sample. Following the 2004 enlargement, the UK, Ireland, and Sweden were the only EU15 countries to immediately allow unrestricted labour market access to the new EU8 countries. Sweden is the only EU15 country to have allowed immediate labour market access to new member states following all three expansions. Switzerland, as an EFTA country, follows the same rules as the EU15. Table 4.5: Lifting of Labour Market Restrictions Country 2004 EU enlargement: EU8 2007 EU enlargement: EU2 2013 EU enlargement: EU1 Austria Belgium Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Ireland Italy Luxembourg Netherlands Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland United Kingdom* May 2011 May 2009 May 2009 May 2006 July 2008 May 2011 May 2006 May 2004 July 2006 November 2007 May 2007 May 2006 May 2006 May 2004 May 2011 May 2004 January 2014 January 2014 May 2009 January 2007 January 2014 January 2014 January 2009 January 2014 January 2012 January 2014 January 2014 January 2009 January 2009¥ January 2007 January 2014 January 2014 1 July 2022 July 2015 July 2013 July 2013 July 2015 July 2015 July 2015 July 2013 July 2015 July 2015 1 July 2018 July 2013 July 2015 July 2013 1 January 2022 30 June 2018 Notes: * The United Kingdom officially left the EU on January 31, 2020. ¥ restrictions for Romania until August 2011 Source: European Commission (2018) and Kahanec et al. (2014) 4.4 Empirical Analysis In this section, we present the results for the seven dependent variables, across 16 European countries for the period 2004-2017, as described in the previous section. We group together the results for spending and EU13 labour migration in Table 4.6 and the results for spending and EU15 & EFTA labour migration in Table 4.7. In Table 4.8, we show the results for the two replacements rates for both EU13 and EU15 labour migration. These tables include all control variables, including a control for foreign-born as a percentage of the labour force to ensure that our more specific labour migration variables are not acting as a proxy for general levels of immigration.
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