Taking into consideration the EU objective set by the Europe 2020 Strategy, i.e. to become a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy, which at the same time implies a growth in employment and labour productivity, our main research question is if there is a trade-off between employment and labour productivity, in a panel of twelve new EU member states, in the 2000-2010 period. The results of our study show that between 2000 and 2010, there was a trade-off between growth in employment and growth in labour productivity, fact which requires taking some measures, in these countries, which should allow the creation of new jobs but the increase in labour productivity as well.