This report attempted to assess the likely number of long-term migrants (i.e. migrants who would remain in the UK for at least 12 months) to the UK from the so-called A8 countries when these countries joined the EU in 2004.

The principal scenario modelled in this paper is one in which A8 nationals would be granted unrestricted access to the labour markets of existing EU member states, especially Germany. In this scenario, the authors predicted that the likely inflows to the UK would be between 5,000 and 13,000 migrants per year.

The authors also considered what would happen if Germany imposed temporary restrictions on access to its labour market. Whilst they did not formally model that scenario, they suggested that up to an additional 70,000 migrants per year would enter the UK and remain for longer than 12 months. In the event Germany did impose restrictions on access to its labour market.

In August 2006, the Office for National Statistics published a figure for net migration from the A8 countries in 2004-05 of approximately 74,000:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/pope0806.pdf