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European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2022 7(1), 87-108, I. EU's shifting borders: an introduction. - II. Protecting borders and respecting human rights. - II.1. How to reconcile diverging constitutional objectives in light of hybridity and informality? - II.2. Which way forward with accountability? - III. EU's external borders: of administrative integration and the physical and legal infrastructures of deflection. - III.1. Hotspots as incubators of liminality and of an emerging European integrated administration. - III.2. Beyond hotspots: securitisation and deflection of "risky" migrants. - III.3. Screening, border asylum procedures, and streamlined returns: what's "new" in the new pact on migration and asylum? - IV. Overview of contributions., Borders have gone far beyond their traditional static function of merely demarcating nation-states. Alongside physical border barriers, such as walls and barbwire fences, new technologies driven by sophisticated legal innovations have contributed to the multiplicity of border controls. These legal techniques have turned the border into an individualised moving barrier, conceptualized as a "shifting border" by Ayelet Shachar. Against this backdrop, this Article introduces, conceptually and thematically, the contributions to this Special Section which critically assess the paradigm of the shifting border in the EU and analyse its implications. We first map out intricate legal issues invoked by the rise of hybridity and informality in the EU's cooperation with third countries on migration and the resulting accountability deficit. Next, we scrutinize the physical and legal infrastructures of mobility regulation (and often deflection) that are currently employed at the EU's external territorial borders. We highlight the emergence of increasing horizontal (between the EU and national level) and vertical (across national levels) administrative integration as a prevailing mode of policy implementation at the EU's borders and reflect on the implications, including both challenges and opportunities, of this development. Finally, we scrutinise the Commission's proposals as part of a New Pact on Migration and Asylum with respect to the envisaged processes at the borders and the streamlining of external border control, asylum, and return in a seamless process finding that they create further risks for fundamental rights and procedural guarantees.

Migration and mobility is an increasingly important topic within the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). The very first ENP Strategy Papers already acknowledged that perspectives for lawful migration and common efforts to combat illegal migration, as well as the establishment of efficient mechanisms for return, are crucial determinants for successful cooperation with neighbouring countries. With the first revision of the ENP the issue of migration and mobility was encapsulated in the two regional dimensions of the ENP covering respectively the Eastern Partnership (EaP) and the Southern Mediterranean. The focus of this chapter is on the EU’s Eastern neighbourhood and EU-related instruments, systematized in three main groups: (1) legally binding instruments; (2) non-legally binding instruments; and (3) operational and cooperation instruments. In addition, this chapter evaluates the effectiveness of the EU’s efforts in light of the EaP’s policy objective to ensure enhanced mobility of citizens in a secure and well-managed environment.

This Issue Paper examines integration policies regarding immigrants and refugees in selected Council of Europe member states in light of human rights standards. In particular, it focuses on how the enjoyment of the right to respect for private and family life and the security of residence of immigrants and refugees facilitate and improve integration policies. It covers the adverse effects that mandatory language and civic integration policies and some other conditions such as income thresholds, housing requirements and reduced financial benefits might have on the socio-economic inclusion of immigrants and refugees. While taking stock of integration policies in some of the European countries which experienced unprecedented massive arrivals of migrants and refugees in the last five years the Issue Paper offers a comparative basis for identifying good integration practices.

This Issue Paper examines integration policies regarding immigrants and refugees in selected Council of Europe member states in light of human rights standards. In particular, it focuses on how the enjoyment of the right to respect for private and family life and the security of residence of immigrants and refugees facilitate and improve integration policies. It covers the adverse effects that mandatory language and civic integration policies and some other conditions such as income thresholds, housing requirements and reduced financial benefits might have on the socio-economic inclusion of immigrants and refugees. While taking stock of integration policies in some of the European countries which experienced unprecedented massive arrivals of migrants and refugees in the last five years the Issue Paper offers a comparative basis for identifying good integration practices.

This Research Paper is a contribution to a wider cost-of non-Europe assessment in the Area of Freedom Security and Justice requested by the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties that can be found here. The research takes stock of the state of play in European Union cooperation in the area of legal immigration. The Research Paper identifies gaps and barriers of current sectorial and fragmented EU legal immigration acquis. It assesses their economic impacts and impacts at individual level in terms of fundamental rights protection and non-discrimination laid down in international, regional and EU human rights and labour standards. The research highlights the need for ‘more EU’ in upholding equal treatment standards between third country workers with EU nationals in relation to working and living conditions. The Research Paper elaborates on the potential benefits, cost drivers and feasibility of different policy options for the EU ranging from: better enforcement, to the gradual extension of EU legislation towards other labour market sectors or bringing back to the idea of a Binding Immigration Code. The research concludes that EU internal market, national administrations as well as EU and Third Country Citizens would benefit from more homogenous policy approach in the area of legal migration.

The concept of circular migration keeps appearing in the context of the eu labour migration policy through legal instruments such as the seasonal workers directive and the proposal for a recast of the blue card directive, as well as it has been featured in the latest mobility partnership with belarus from october 2016. These examples suggest that the eu still has some interest in promoting circular migration as a policy instrument. The question is what does this interest mean in terms of the rights of migrant workers? most of the literature so far focuses on conceptualising circular migration or analysing circular migration patterns rather than looking into implementation dynamics as part of the eu migration policy and its external dimension. This chapter aims at filling namely this gap by assessing the circularity of eu labour migration policies with regards to the eastern partnership neighbourhood and addressing the question of whether they provide rights-based outcomes for migrant workers. This is done through the prism of a framework of benchmarks based on international universal and regional human rights standards as well as policy measures that foster circularity focusing on entry and re-entry conditions, work authorisation, residence, social security coordination and entry and residence conditions for family members. This chapter is based on legal empirical research and combines legal and policy analysis with qualitative methods.

The Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) is a reference guide and a fully interactive tool to assess, compare and improve integration policy. It measures integration policies in 40 countries in Europe and North America in order to provide a view of integration policies across a broad range of differing environments. MIPEX was developed in these countries by the British Council and the Migration Policy Group (MPG). Using 148 policy indicators, MIPEX establishes the extent to which all residents are legally entitled to equal rights and responsibilities, as well as to any support that addresses their specific needs to make equal opportunities a reality. Newcomers to Croatia will face barely halfway favourable policies for their integration. With an overall MIPEX score of 42/100, it ranks alongside other ‘new’ immigration countries in the MIPEX on the Balkans, such as Bulgaria, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia. Croatia’s policies that best promote integration are in areas of European law. Nevertheless, these legal conditions can be undermined by authorities’ rather discretionary procedures, a problem across Central and Eastern Europe. Newcomers to Croatia lack many basic opportunities, such as targeted state support to find the right job, improve the education of their children, or participate in political life. Their children, even if born in the country, are not eligible to be citizens at birth and dual nationality is not accepted, which is contrary to the trend in the majority of MIPEX countries.

European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2022 7(1), 151-170, I. Introduction. - II. Subsidiarity. - II.1. Subsidiarity and the exercise of the Union's external competences. - II.2. The Union's readmission policy to the test of subsidiarity. - III. Institutional balance. - III.1. Institutional balance in the area of readmission according to the Treaties. - III.2. The Union's re-admission policy to the test of institutional balance. - IV. Conclusion., Migration governance entails the enactment of a bordering process, drawing lines of inclusion and exclusion, through legal instruments, policy tools and funding decisions. The level of experimentalism through which this process is increasingly carried out by the EU demands constant reflection on its overall limits and constraints, on the part of those working on it from a constitutional perspective. The present Article aims at contributing to that reflection effort by analysing the EU's readmission policy from the standpoint of two principles governing its exercise as a shared competence: subsidiarity and institutional balance. Both principles require EU institutions to engage with the constitutional logic which underlies Treaty choices. On the one hand, subsidiarity reminds the institutions of the need to consider the input and output legitimacy of their intervention in areas of non-exclusive competences. On the other hand, institutional balance contributes to such a legitimacy, by maintaining institutional action and interaction within pre-defined boundaries. In the strongly politicised arena of the common readmission policy, characterised by a high degree of experimentalism, the flexible anchoring in the Treaty framework provided by these two principles would constitute a sound foundation for legitimate EU level action, including through soft law. So far, this potential has been underexploited.