European harmonization of immigration and asylum policy

type: Article , Topic: Migration

As part of the EU’s institutional and programmatic evolution, a common European migration and refugee policy has developed as the external dimension of the justice and home affairs area.

To flesh out this external dimension, the European Council adopted the Global Approach to Migration in December 2005. The Global Approach illustrates the ambition of the European Union to establish an inter-sectoral framework to manage migration in a coherent way through political dialogue and close practical cooperation with countries of origin and transit. The Global Approach has since been further expanded and refined, most recently, following a comprehensive review of the Global Approach, on the basis of the European Commission Communication of 18 November 2011 and the related Council Conclusions on the Global Approach to Migration and Mobility (GAMM).

Prior to that, the Global Approach pursued the following goals (“three pillars”):

  • Combating illegal migration
  • Utilizing the positive effects of legal migration
  • Linking migration and development policy

The most recent Council Conclusions added

  • refugee protection/international protection

as an equally important fourth goal.

Against the backdrop of globalization, demographic and social change and their many and varied impacts on migration and refugees, this Communication by the European Commission expanded the framework of external EU migration policy in terms of its content and geographic scope. The Council’s Conclusions largely agreed with the Commission in this regard.

The expanded Global Approach has a new emphasis on mobility to improve the EU’s competitiveness and seeks a more global orientation (regional dialogue processes and various sub-regional processes are to be consolidated or subsumed under the Global Approach). The expanded Global Approach aims at better and more comprehensive migration management based on stronger partnership with countries of origin and transit.

Two basic types of cooperation partnerships with third countries are planned for the future implementation of the Global Approach:

  • mobility partnerships (MP) and
  • the Common Agenda on Migration and Mobility (CAMM).

In future, mobility partnerships are to be coupled with visa facilitation and readmission agreements, while the CAMM is intended as a more limited framework for cooperation when a mobility partnership is unattainable.

In October 2008, the Council adopted the European Pact on Immigration and Asylum in order to give new impetus to efforts to develop a common immigration and asylum policy. The Pact forms the foundation for a common immigration and asylum policy of the Union and its Member States in the spirit of solidarity between the Member States and cooperation with third countries. The Pact contains five basic commitments:

  1. to organize legal immigration to take account of the priorities, needs and reception capacities determined by each Member State, and to encourage integration;
  2. to control illegal immigration by ensuring that illegal immigrants return to their countries of origin or to a country of transit;
  3. to make border controls more effective;
  4. to construct a Europe of asylum;
  5. and to create a comprehensive partnership with the countries of origin and of transit.

The Member States report each year on their implementation of the Pact, and since 2010 the European Council has conducted an annual discussion of immigration and asylum policy, to stay abreast of the most important developments and offer new ideas as needed.

Concrete measures for implementing the Pact are carried out in the framework of the Stockholm Programme, “An open and secure Europe serving and protecting citizens”, which followed the Hague Programme in 2010.

Shaping European migration and asylum policy is an ongoing process in which a large number of projects are being discussed and implemented at the same time. Since the Treaty of Amsterdam entered into force, progress has been made in all areas of common asylum and migration policy, and numerous Community legislative acts have been adopted. The following pages provide an overview of some of the most important projects and legislation.

For more information about current developments in justice and home affairs, please visit the European Commission website.

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