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Such is the hypocrisy we show towards free trade. When it’s about us travelling abroad without the need for a visa, buying property and coming home with an MPV-load of cheap wine and fags, we’re all for it. When it’s about foreigners coming here to look for work in our restaurants and on our building sites, on the other hand, suddenly it’s not such a good idea after all. Western European nations have been quick to erect barriers to keep out Eastern European workers for seven years to come. Yet as part of their conditions of entry the EU’s new member states have been ordered to open their property markets to foreign investors from the outset. Poland and the Baltic states have already done so; the Czech Republic will have to relax rules against foreigners buying property by 31 January next year.
The attentions of buy-to-let investors aren’t going to make life any easier for young Eastern Europeans wanting to buy their own homes: house prices in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, for example, have risen by 50 per cent over the past year in anticipation of EU membership. Eastern Europeans face seven years at the hands of Western European rentiers before they will be allowed to reap their own benefit from the single market.
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