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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.

This chapter offers an analysis of the eu mobility partnerships as one case in point for policy intersectionality, within the framework of the multi-level governance literature. It argues that the governance of mobility partnerships is characterized by its multi-actor nature, and focuses on the consequences of different actors’ preferences and interactions for policy-making and implementation. In particular, it emphasises the roles of the non-eu countries and member states in making and shaping eu external migration policy. Finally, the chapter analyses implementation, something which has been understudied in the literature to date. It argues that the multi-actor nature of eu external migration policy presents obstacles to implementation due to the different policy visions of the different actors, and the non-hierarchical structure which links them.

The issue of eu policy coherence has attracted tremendous attention from academics and policy makers. Alongside much conceptual querying of what policy coherence means, there is a continuous lamenting of the lack of policy coherence, and the need for more is stressed. Political scientists analyse the decision-making procedures and conclude that different eu institutions, bodies and agencies do not coordinate, resulting in policy coherence. Legal scientists bemoan the incoherent eu legal order and argue for further treaty reform. This chapter takes the case of the eu (external) migration policy to show that this widespread incoherence is a normal and inevitable feature of eu governance in this field, and of any pluralistic, democratic and rule of law based system of government. Divergent interests, values, and actors can only be accommodated in policies by allowing for some degree of policy incoherence, it is thus the condition upon which eu policy making is premised. The chapter argues that the dominant preoccupation with policy coherence should be reappraised, and advances a broad notion of coherence embedded in the rule of law.

Published online 22 January 2016 Greater cooperation with third countries is one of the EU’s core responses to the refugee crisis. This cooperation is focused on the readmission of individuals irregularly staying in the EU, on border surveillance and control, and on the reception of refugees in third countries. The EU has attempted to co-opt Turkey and African countries into these priorities, using funding and specific mobility channels as incentives. This paper poses the question of what kind of cooperation the EU should pursue with third countries. As the current approaches are not new, we present the lessons from the EU’s long cooperation with Morocco to inform the current debate. We find that, first, the difficult negotiations on an EU Readmission Agreement with Morocco show that more funding or ‘incentives’ cannot guarantee such an agreement, let alone its implementation. Second, we highlight the challenges of the partly EU-funded and Frontex-coordinated cooperation on borders between Spain and Morocco, which hampers the capacity of third countries to respect migrants’ rights and challenges the obligations of EU member states under European and international law. Third, as EU cooperation with Turkey and Africa now aims to ‘stem’ the flow of asylum-seekers, the capacity of third countries to offer reception and protection to asylumseekers is crucial. We conclude that Morocco has limited capacities in this regard, which raises the question of whether third countries can be assumed to be able to offer such reception and protection. We argue that the lessons learnt from the cooperation with Morocco illustrate the limited feasibility and appropriateness of the EU’s approach towards third countries. Cooperation with third countries should not come at the expense of migrants’ rights, but should open up regular channels for seeking asylum, and not link readmission to other fields of EU external action under the ‘more-for-more’ principle.