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Globalisation has increased the mobility of people while rapid development of the knowledge economy places human capital at the centre of economic progress. Both result in competition for highly skilled labour among states, particularly the more-developed states. The EU has a particular role in this global competition for the highly skilled. It is faced with the ageing of its population. Furthermore, the quest to revitalise the EU's economy by implementing the ambitious Lisbon Strategy requires an additional 700,000 research positions. Lastly, the EU is trying to design a common European policy for economic migration, starting with the Green Paper in 2005. This article aims to contribute to a common policy design in the area of highly skilled temporary migration. It compares the UK and German schemes for highly skilled immigrants (the only two in the EU) with the successful US scheme, still seen as the benchmark for the EU. The findings are twofold. First, there is a set of obligatory characteristics that should be introduced to the schemes to make them more attractive. Second, as the programmes are not the only factors that determine the attractiveness of a respective country, the article argues that an EU common policy for highly skilled migrants would make the EU area more attractive as a whole and therefore increase its competitiveness in the global economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the article is to fill a gap in the literature on the externalisation of immigration control by focusing not on practices of extraterritorial immigration control but on the externalisation of immigration control at the EU external border. The article will examine four parallel and inter‐related trends of preventive injustice on the border: the denial of law and pushbacks, and their handling by judicial authorities and EU institutions and agencies; the emerging framework of the instrumentalisation of migration; the normalisation of border procedures based on the fiction of 'non‐entry'; and detention of third‐country nationals at the border, to back up non‐entry policies. The article will highlight the rule of law deficit such externalisation entails. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The endorsement/affirmation of the Global Compact on Migration and the Global Compact for Refugees in December 2018 has been accompanied by an intense discussion about the need to introduce new norms in these fields and about the actual legal force of the respective provisions. There was and there persists an open contrast between the openly declared non‐bindingness of these Compacts and the widespread fear that they would either severely constrain national sovereignty in highly delicate areas or dilute arduously achieved standards (especially with regard to refugee law). Eventually, this whole discussion leads to the question about the meaning and the status of soft law in international law. With regard to the European Union, the transformative impact of the Global Compacts will depend on whether the EU further proceeds on its path of "emancipation" from international law while internally finding no consensus on the values here at issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the author discusses the various topics within the issue, including migration, asylum, and the European Union (EU) return system.

This article explores the tension between freedom of movement within the EC/EU and the principle of social solidarity, a tension which has increased in step with the progressive enlargement over the years of the circle of potential beneficiaries of the right to cross-border access to the social and welfare benefits guaranteed by the social protection systems of the Member States. The article aims to re-construct the system of Community rules regarding the free movement of persons within the EU from the point of view of the justifying criteria for the cross-border access to national welfare systems of the different categories of ‘migrants’. The focus of the article is on the different degrees and models of solidarity which, at least at the present stage of the European integration process, justify correspondingly graduated and differentiated forms of cross-border access to Member States' social and welfare benefits for the various categories of persons who move about within the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union aims to develop a European criminal justice to combat cross-border crimes of smuggling of migrants and trafficking in human beings. This article focuses its attention on European Community/European Union (EC/EU) law and on two Member States, Italy and the United Kingdom (UK). The findings show that there are diversities and ambiguities in the definition of irregular migration. On the contrary, the EU and Member States should concentrate their efforts on the two crimes of smuggling of migrants and trafficking in human beings rather than criminalising irregular migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at the development of the UK's policies towards asylum-seekers who are to be returned to some country other than the one where they fear persecution (its ‘safe third country’ policy). The Dublin Convention of 1990 addressed some of the problems which this policy created, but left others unresolved. Domestic legislation has progressively reduced the opportunities for challenging safe third-country removals, especially to an EU state. The incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law has generated new possibilities for challenging safe third-country decisions where removal might damage physical or mental health. Articles 3 and 8 have been invoked in particular. The Dublin machinery established ‘rules’ to decide which member state was responsible for considering the asylum claim and the procedure to be followed. The article examines why the UK courts have said that these provisions are not justiciable in the English courts. Finally the article considers whether the experience with Dublin provides any useful guidance as to the approach that will be taken to European arrest warrants and extradition requests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An area of freedom, security and justice was created by the Treaty of Maastricht of 1991/1993. Immigration and asylum of third-country nationals was inserted into Title IV EC by the Treaty of Amsterdam of 1997/1999. The European Council of Tampere of October 1999 provided a substantive input. The proposals of the European Commission cover almost all aspects of immigration and asylum and, in line with the Tampere conclusions, are oriented at the status of EU citizens. A common European migration and asylum policy has been realised at an astonishing speed, though some core instruments have not yet been adopted. During the negotiations the proposals have been watered down and thus provide only relatively low standards, in particular as regards access to employment, which is an important requisite for the integration of migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]