scholarly journals EU Legal Migration Policy: Are There Prospects for Progress or Is It at a Standstill?

Author(s):  
Justyna Godlewska-Szyrkowa ◽  

The aim of the article is to attempt to identify the state of, and prospects for, the development of the common policy of the European Union regarding legal migration from third countries. The subject of interest is, above all, legal economic migration, which is crucial from the perspective of certain demographic processes taking place in the EU, the changes and needs of the Community’s labour market, and the challenges posed by the digital transformation. The adopted hypothesis assumes that, within the framework of EU migration and asylum policy, policy as regards legal economic migration is still an underdeveloped area and remains in the hands of individual Member States. Initiatives undertaken in this area remain overshadowed by the main focus of the common migration and asylum policy, namely the development of a common asylum system and the prevention of irregular migration. Policy regarding legal economic migration in the near future will mainly be created by Member States and play out on the domestic stage due to the lack of direct motivation for its development at the Community level. In this case, the strength of particular stakeholders’ interests is not balanced out by any direct and easily identifi able benefits to be gained from the adopted common solutions.

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Carmel

The analysis of EU migration policy has been focused primarily on evaluating its relationship to EU law, or its application to individual member states. This article argues that neither focus can address the full implications and effects of EU migration governance. The Union’s migration and free movement policies set out to organise populations both within and beyond its formal borders. They are part of the broader governance of the European Union as an integrated market, and as an international policymaker. As such, the characteristics and effects of migration governance across the EU as a whole need to be assessed. At the EU level, EU policy and law on migration creates the illusion of policy coherence, applied to all member states, incomers and residents. Yet these apparently coherent EU policies always co-exist with three confounding factors: 1) national and local variation in migration, integration and social policies; 2) national and local labour market variation, particularly in the role of informal economy, and 3) profound member state hierarchies in the EU’s political economy, reinforced by the ongoing crisis. However, this does not mean that the EU’s migration policymaking is irrelevant to member states. Rather, migration governance in the EU is co-produced by the cross-cutting and sometimes contradictory policies of other actors. With its illusion of policy coherence, this co-produced governance both disguises and entrenches significant hierarchy among member states. It contributes to an EU polity which manages diversity through inequalities.


2015 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 328-348
Author(s):  
Nikola Stojanovic

The paper analyses the implementation of the EU immigration and asylum policy and the control of EU member states' external borders in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. The author argues that the European Union pursues an exclusive version of those policies aimed at reducing the immigration pressure as well as preventing illegal border crossings into the member states. Two key mechanisms have been identified in the EU policy implementation: 1) a restrictive border control regime, and 2) agreements to transfer border management and supervision tasks to the third countries (transitional countries). The author emphasizes that the development of an exclusive migration strategy was not followed by the needed changes of the inclusive aspects of the EU immigration and asylum policy and the control of external borders; in fact, the EU member state's asylum systems were not preventively strengthened as to enhance national capacities to receive and integrate new migrants. The dramatic increase of the number of illegal crossings of the European Union external borders in 2014 caused the collapse of the EU immigration strategy, and failures in national asylum systems of the member states. The author concludes that partially integrated EU immigration and asylum policy at national level led to the dysfunctional external border management and the EU's loss of control over massive immigration influxes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-123
Author(s):  
Mikael Rask Madsen

Abstract The European Convention of Human Rights system was originally created to sound the alarm if democracy was threatened in the member states. Yet, it eventually developed into a very different system with a focus on providing individual justice in an ever growing number of member states. This transformation has raised fundamental questions as to the level of difference and diversity allowed within the common European human rights space. Was the system to rest on minimum standards with room for domestic differences, or was it to create uniform standards? These questions have come up as increasingly contentious issues over the past years and have triggered a number of reforms seeking to introduce more subsidiarity in the system, striking a different balance between the European and national oversight of human rights. The article analyses this turn to subsidiarity by exploring whether the reform process has introduced new forms of difference and diversity within the common space of European human rights. Covering the period from 2000 to the end of 2019 and using a dataset of all judgments of the period, the article provides a structural analysis of developments in reference to the margin of appreciation which is the European Court of Human Rights’ long-standing tool for balancing the common standards, yet leaving space for individual member states to find local solutions to implementing those standards. It concludes that recent developments have contributed to a more federal-style construction of European human rights with more space for differences within the common general standards.


2021 ◽  
Vol 562 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-23
Author(s):  
Władysław Bogdan Sztyber

The article presents the impact of the level of education of employees on their income in various terms. One of them is a study based on the OECD data from 2004–2005, which shows the differentiation of incomes of employees with different levels of education on the basis of the relative differentiation between them, assuming the income level of employees with upper secondary education as 100 and referring to it respectively the income level of employees with higher education and the level of income of employees with lower secondary education. The article then presents a more elaborate study of the impact of the level of education of employees on their incomes in the European Union, included in the Report “The European Higher Education Area in 2015”. This survey shows the impact of the education level of employees on the median of their gross annual income in the European Union and in the individual Member States. The article also compares the income differentiation depending on the level of education, based on the OECD data for 2004–2005, with the results of surveys on European Union Member States in 2010 and 2013.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Folkert Kuiken ◽  
Elisabeth van der Linden

The European Union encourages all its citizens to be able to speak two languages in addition to their mother tongue. However, since the content of educational systems is the responsibility of individual member states, promoting multilingualism depends on the language policy of each member state. Still, countries may learn from practices and experiences in other countries. The similarities and differences between two case studies may be instructive from that point of view. In this paper, language policy and language education in two EU member states are compared with each other: the Netherlands on the one hand and Romania on the other. Questions that will be raised are: what are the linguistic rights of the minority groups, which languages are taught to whom, and to which degree is multilingualism an issue in both countries? Despite differences between the two countries, some striking similarities are observed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-86
Author(s):  
Dragan Trailovic

The article explores the European Union's approach to human rights issues in China through the processes of bilateral and multilateral dialogue on human rights between the EU and the People's Republic of China, on the one hand. On the other hand, the paper deals with the analysis of the EU's human rights policy in the specific case of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which is examined through normative and political activities of the EU, its institutions and individual member states. Besides, the paper examines China's response to the European Union's human rights approaches, in general, but also when it comes to the specific case of UAR Xinjiang. ?his is done through a review of China's discourse and behaviour within the EU-China Human Rights Dialogue framework, but also at the UN level and within the framework of bilateral relations with individual member states. The paper aims to show whether and how the characteristics of the EU's general approach to human rights in China are reflected in the individual case of Xinjiang. Particular attention shall be given to the differentiation of member states in terms of their approach to human rights issues in China, which is conditioned by the discrepancy between their political values, normative interests and ideational factors, on the one hand, and material factors and economic interests, on the other. Also, the paper aims to show the important features of the different views of the European Union and the Chinese state on the very role of Human Rights Dialogue, as well as their different understandings of the concept of human rights itself. The study concluded that the characteristics of the Union's general approach to human rights in China, as well as the different perceptions of human rights issues between China and the EU, were manifested in the same way in the case of UAR Xinjiang.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (4-1) ◽  
pp. 21-30
Author(s):  
Uğur Burç Yıldız İ ◽  
Anıl Çamyamaç

Abstract Having previously remained impartial on the Gibraltar question between Spain and Britain since both were member states, the European Union suddenly changed its position after the Brexit referendum in favor of the Spanish government at the expense of breaching international law. In doing so, the European Union, for the first time, created a foreign policy on the long-standing Gibraltar question. This article explores the reasons behind the creation of this foreign policy in support of Spain. The European Union feared that the idea of Euroscepticism may escalate among remaining member states after the Brexit referendum because of wide-spread claims that it would dissolve in the near future, fuelled by farright political parties. The European Union therefore created a foreign policy regarding Gibraltar in Spain’s favor in order to promote a “sense of community” for thwarting a further rise in Euroscepticism. While making its analysis, the article applies the assumption of social constructivism that ideas shape interests, which then determine the foreign policy choices of actors.


Author(s):  
Kreuschitz Viktor ◽  
Nehl Hanns Peter

This chapter assesses the enforcement of EU State aid rules. The Commission is not the only authority involved in the monitoring of State aid. As regards the supervision of Member States' compliance with their obligations under Articles 107 and 108 TFEU, the national courts also have an important role to play. The implementation of that system of control is a matter for both the Commission and the national courts, their respective roles being complementary but separate. Whilst assessment of the compatibility of aid measures with the common market falls within the exclusive competence of the Commission, subject to review by the Courts of the European Union, it is for national courts to ensure the safeguarding, until the final decision of the Commission, of the rights of individuals faced with a possible breach by State authorities of the prohibition laid down by Article 108(3) TFEU.


Author(s):  
Christina Eckes

Chapter 2 discusses the legal consequences and deeper meaning of EU loyalty with particular attention to external relations. It identifies specific active and passive obligations flowing from the principle of sincere cooperation in the context of EU external relations and argues that they are best understood as forming part of a comprehensive duty of loyalty. EU loyalty endows EU membership with a distinctive meaning. It is central to imposing a quasi-federal discipline and making sovereign states ‘Member States of the EU’ by acting as a tool that can at times take specific legal obligations beyond the letter of the law. EU loyalty legally restrains Member States from exercising their rights as independent international actors in a way that finds no parallel beyond the European Union. It may require placing the common Union interest above national interests. The concept of unity of international representation has a particular capacity to deepen and widen the obligations flowing from EU loyalty. It amplifies the effects of EU loyalty on the scope of legal action of the Member States, including in the field of reserved competences. It is also part of the explanation of why loyalty has more stringent consequences externally rather than internally. This in turn means that the duty of loyalty has a particular integrative force in the context of external relations. Chapter 2 also argues that this stringent understanding of EU loyalty is justified by the nature of external relations and that this justification should be (better) explicated by the EU institutions in order to justify EU external actions vis-à-vis EU citizens.


Author(s):  
Thomas Faist

Europe, and the European Union in particular, can be conceived as a transnational social space with a high degree of transactions across borders of member states. The question is how efforts to provide social protection for cross-border migrants in the EU reinforce existing inequalities (e.g. between regions or within households), and lead to new types of inequalities (e.g. stratification of labour markets). Social protection in the EU falls predominantly under the purview of individual member states; hence, frictions between different state-operated protection systems and social protection in small groups are particularly apparent in the case of cross-border flows of people and resources. Chapter 5 examines in detail the general social mechanisms operative in cross-border forms of social protection, in particular, exclusion, opportunity hoarding, hierarchization, and exploitation, and also more concrete mechanisms which need to be constructed bottom-up.


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