Enlargement of the European Union and "morally imperative", which reflected the desire of the EU to admit these countries as members, even though they were less developed than the Western European countries. Following this Romania and Bulgaria, though were deemed initially as not fully ready by the Commission to join in 2004, acceded nevertheless on 1 January 2007. These, like the countries joining in 2004, faced a series of restrictions as to their citizens not fully enjoying working rights on the territory of some of the older EU members. Bulgaria and Romania are not yet members of the Schengen area; however, their citizens can travel
First-level NUTS of the European Union First-level NUTS of the European Union The Classification of Territorial Units for Statistics, (NUTS, for the French ""), is a geocode standard for referencing the administrative divisions of countries for statistical purposes. The standard was developed by the European Union. There are three levels of NUTS defined, with two levels of local administrative units (LAUs) below. Depending on their size, not all countries have every level of division. One of the most extreme cases is Luxembourg, which has only LAUs; the three NUTS divisions each correspond to the entire country itself. Below are the "first level NUTS regions" of the