b'3.2.3.1. European Economic Area The EEA Agreement includes specific clauses(Protocol 38, Article 4.1), the three states on the free movement of workers beginningmentioned above have decided internally to with Article 2b:split up their portions of the FM based on GDP (revised in Article 2 of EFTA Decision In order to attain the objectives set out3/2010/SC, 1 July 2010).51 & 52in paragraph 1, the association shall entail, in accordance with the provisionsBoth the amount of the FM and the countries of this Agreement: the free movement ofcovered by it have increased substantially persons.since the EEAs inception. For the period 1994 to 1999, the total contributionunder The EEA has further major disadvantages.the Financial Mechanism was 500 million Protocols 37, 38 and 38a of the EEA distributed amongst Greece, Ireland, Agreement of 1992 establishing the FinancialNorthern Ireland, Portugal, and nine regions Mechanism (FM) mandate contributionsof Spain.53byLiechtenstein, Iceland, and Norwayto the EU programmes that they participate inWhen Eastern European countries joined - determined by the proportion of thesethe EU in 2004, the EFTA/EEA states countries combined GDP to the EEAs GDP.contribution for the period 2004 to 2009 The contributionsgo to countries designatedwas 1.2 billion compared with 119.6 by the EU - meaning control of where themillion during the previous period from 1999 money goes is largely out of these countriesto 2003, a huge increase.54 For the period hands.2009-14, the contributionsare known as the EEA Grants and are disbursed in annual Because of Article 128 in the Agreement, thetranches of 197.7 million to the 12 newest total amount of contributionsincreases whenEU member states (Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech new countries join the EU (and thus the EEA).Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, While the EU determines the amount of theMalta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Financial Mechanism and the proportionsSlovenia), as well as to Greece, Portugal, and going to the various recipient countriesSpain.55 This is a total of 2.8 billion.56 5786'