Germany's ruling coalition has called for restricting the access of East Europeans to its labour market by 2011, two years later than initially planned.

Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats and the center-left Social Democrats are both pushing for Germany to provide unfettered access to its labour markets not earlier than 2011, the influential Spiegel weekly magazine reported.

The debate is about the westward migration spurred by the EU's "big bang" enlargement in 2004 that took in eight lower-wage ex-communist countries.

Britain, Ireland and Sweden were the only "old" member states that did not impose curbs on workers from these nations.

Germany, along with other leading "old" nations, also limited the number of workers they accept from Bulgaria and Romania, which joined the European Union at the beginning of this year.

The restrictions were said to remain in place until 2009, just as in the case with the eight other eastern European states, which joined the bloc in 2004.

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