The Swedish government does not rule out an open door policy for migrant workers coming from Bulgaria and Romania, when they join the European Union next year, reports say.

Sweden was one the only three EU countries, along with Britain and Ireland, which granted unrestricted access to workers from the EU newcomer states in 2004.

Following the decision of Britain and Ireland to limit the working rights for Bulgarians and Romanians as of 2007, Sweden remains alone among the 15 pre-2004 EU members to allow them unfettered access to its labour market.

"We have not seen negative effects following the expansion in 2004," Sweden's migration minister Tobias Billstrom told The Local.

"Sweden has been looked on as a country that people from these countries don't even want to migrate to due to high labour costs and other factors. This is perhaps the greater problem for us now."

"The UK and Ireland are in a very different position. One large factor is that Sweden is not an English-speaking country. Swedish is a small language."

Billstrom said that while prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt has made clear that he was keeping the policy under review, there was little likelihood of a change of heart.

Up to April 2006 only around 10,000 people from the ten countries that joined in 2004 had applied for work permits in Sweden, of which most were from Sweden's neighbours Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia.

He explained that unlike Britain, Sweden has not seen a slump in wages and does not expect this to happen.

"Enlargement has had a positive, but very marginal, effect on the Swedish labour market."

He also said that there had been no abuse of Sweden's benefit system, so-called social tourism.

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