Fears of a massive influx of migrants from Eastern European states when the EU expands in May are overblown, the President of the European Parliament said today.
Mr Pat Cox called on the heads of government of Britain, Germany and France - meeting in Berlin today - to show leadership by taking a "generous" approach to immigration from the new EU member states.
Ireland is the only remaining EU state not planning restrictions on immigrants from the ten accession states which join the EU on May 1st.
The Munster MEP said that history showed fears of large-scale migration were likely to be unfounded.
"We know from the 1990s, a lot of people left countries like Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in the first flush of freedom after the collapse of Communism and two-thirds of them went back home again to find opportunity at home," he told the BBC Radio 4 Todayprogramme. "That was the experience with Spain and Portugal when we enlarged the Union in the 1980s.
"France and others feared floods of migrants coming north. It didn't happen and the rules that they put in place fell into disuse," he added. "One hopes that that will be the experience in the months and years to come with these new states."
While workers from the new EU states will be lured by wages as much as double what they can earn at home, money would not be the only issue determining their decision on whether to migrate, Mr Cox insisted.
"There is a temptation there, but if you live in Poland, speak Polish, don't speak English, like to visit your family and friends, follow your local football team and your economy is growing at 5 per cent a year and things are looking up, maybe it looks different from Poland than it does from Conservative headquarters in London," he said.
Pressures to close borders to workers from Eastern Europe were part of an "ungenerous debate" which saw rich states vying with one another to ratchet up immigration controls instead of recognising their common need for new supplies of labour, said Mr Cox.
He called on British Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac to "start acting with some sense of generosity" over migration.
"It might be a useful moment to see what message we can give to avoid the shame that we see of trafficking in people, gangmasters, people drowning at sea and suffocating in trucks and dying in the undercarriages of planes," he said.