Migrant Integration Policy Index II
Summary
MPG launches the first of its MIPEX Policy Impact Assessments: What future for immigrant families in Europe – the high road back to Tampere or the low road on from Vichy?
Description
This MIPEX Policy Brief on Family Reunion is the 1st in a series of retrospective and prospective MIPEX policy impact assessments. The aim is to make information on EU policy developments more accessible to a wide range of stakeholders and policymakers wishing to contribute to future debates and actions on setting integration standards in Europe.
What future for immigrant families in Europe: the high road back to Tampere or the low road on from Vichy? Whether it’s for third-country nationals living in Europe or EU citizens living in another EU Member State, a common EU family reunion policy is supposed to make their family life possible and give them that sense of socio-cultural stability which facilitates integration. Yet in its current state, EC law on the right to family reunion for third-country nationals flounders between maximum standards, backed by strong vision and good intentions, and minimum standards, backed by political conveniences. Directive 2003/86 was a “lowest common denominator” that has since had little positive effect across its Member States.
Now October 2008 has brought two new developments to the EU agenda on family reunion that could either seriously pull it off track or give it new steam. Both the Commission’s report on the application of directive 2003/86 and the French Presidency’s European Pact on Immigration and Asylum promise substantial but conflicting changes that would give the EU a greater impact on national legislation and the security of immigrant families across Europe.
At this moment of policy evaluation and feedback, MPG’s brief uses the MIPEX to re-tell the history of the family reunion directive. It forecasts how proposed modifications would bring the EU closer to, or further from, its vision of promoting integration and how each initiative would concretely raise or lower integration standards in national legislation in 25 Member States.
Following the French Presidency’s interpretation of the Pact would effectively lower the directive’s maximum standards which the French Presidency would see as too liberal for its “immigration choisie” agenda. The conditions for acquisition would be more restrictive and immigrant families would become less secure in their status in nearly every EU Member State, except France, which would see the rest of Europe harmonising around the recent restrictionist legislation initiated by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Supporting the recommendations from the Commission’s recent report on the directive would raise the directive’s minimum standards on issues that evaluation studies indicate may contravene the directive’s aim to facilitate family reunion as a means to promote integration. This approach would have the effect of modestly improving family reunion policies in nearly every EU Member State. The road back to fair treatment and equal opportunities may start by guaranteeing those benefiting from a Community family reunion status the same security, rights, and good governance standards that EU citizens enjoy.
