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Artikel van Steve Peers  een Britse professor "My analysis of the new EU law on advance travel authorisation for non-EU citizens, including UK citizens after Brexit" Introduction Yesterday it was announced that a new EU law on travel authorisation for non-EU citizens to visit the EU had been agreed. This will affect millions of travellers a year, probably including British citizens after Brexit. In fact, as a UK citizen who often travels to the continent, it’s the first EU law on non-EU immigration that will have a direct impact on me. The law won’t apply for awhile, but in light of its future significant impact and some public confusion about who it will apply to and how it works, it’s worth explaining in detail. Basics of the system First of all, a travel authorisation is not a visa. While it is similar to a short-term travel visa in the sense that it is a process for deciding in advance whether a person can enter the territory, it will be much simpler and less...

Professor Steve Peers How should the EU deal with the perceived ‘migrant/refugee crisis’? It has done a number of things, but back in September 2015, when the numbers of arrivals were peaking, it did something truly remarkable – requiring Member States to relocate 160,000 asylum-seekers from the ‘frontline’ states of Italy and Greece, which were bearing most of the burden of new arrivals. In fact, this took the form of two separate decisions, as I discussed in detail at the time. The first decision was relatively uncontroversial, since it concerned only 40,000 people and Member States had agreed to admit them by consensus. But the second decision , concerning the other 120,000 people, was adopted against the objection of several Member States and set out mandatory quotas for admission. This led to legal action by Slovakia and Hungary to challenge this decision before the ECJ (see discussion of the Slovak challenge here ). This week, the ECJ ruled against this legal chal...

Steve Peers For a number of years, the EU has aimed to attract highly-skilled non-EU migrants to its territory. However, the existing legislation on this issue – the researchers’ Directive , adopted in 2005, and the students’ Directive , adopted in 2004 – have only had a modest impact on attracting more students and researchers to the EU, according to the Commission’s reports (see  here  and  here ) on the two Directives, issued in 2011. Consequently, the Commission proposed an overhaul of this legislation in 2013. The European Parliament (EP) and the Council recently agreed on the text of this proposal (for the text of the provisional version of the future Directive, see here ; the final version will be ‘tidied up’ a little legally). As you would expect, the EP and the Council compromised between their respective positions (for those positions, see  here and  here ), which I discussed in an earlier blog post. I’ll examine first the b...

EU Immigration and Asylum Law (Text and Commentary): Second Revised Edition (Immigration and Asylum Law and Policy in Europe) Hardcover – 18 May 2015 by Steve Peers (Author), Madeline Garlick (Author), ...

 Steve Peers is a Professor of EU and Human Rights Law at the University of Essex.   Today this Commission releases its EU immigration strategy. The final text is not available yet, but here are my thoughts on the earlier version, leaked on Monday. I will update them if the final strategy differs significantly from the leaked draft. Content The migration strategy is divided into three parts. First of all, it sets out ‘immediate action’ to address the migrant death crisis. Secondly, it describes an agenda for immigration management in four areas: irregular immigration, border management, asylum and legal migration. Finally, it briefly sets out some long-term objectives. Immediate action The ‘immediate action’ section largely elaborates upon the strategy already defined by EU leaders in response to the deaths in the Mediterranean. As I discussed already , this is a modest response to the crisis, focussed mainly upon enlarging EU interception operations in the Me...

Steve Peers On Monday, EU foreign and interior ministers adopted a ten-point plan in response to the recent huge death toll of migrants crossing the Mediterranean. There will be a summit on Thursday to examine the issue further, and then an EU Commission strategy proposed on May 13 th . But for now, I want to examine the initial plan. Overall, this is a very disappointing document. It’s not only vague on crucial details but more importantly focusses less on the situation of the migrants (addressing the root causes which cause them to move, and protection from drowning and persecution) and more on border control and repression. One point in the plan constitutes a rather crass example of ‘policy laundering’ – attempting to use a crisis to shove through an essentially unrelated policy objective. Let’s look at the ten points of the EU plan in turn, then examine the ‘Australian solution’ and the ‘Christians only’ approach which some have suggested. For alternative solutions ...

  Steve Peers It’s been well over twenty years since the CJEU established, in the case of Francovich , that individuals could sue Member States in damages for breach of EU law. Yet many of the cases concerned have been brought by businesses for lost profit. The CJEU has never had the opportunity to apply the principles relating to damages claims in a case concerning the free movement of EU citizens. But in its recent judgment in Ogieriakhi , the Irish High Court delivered a ruling on this issue, awarding over €100,000 to the family member of an EU citizen for breach of EU free movement law. This judgment  isn’t a precedent as such outside Ireland, but it is a useful indication of how such claims might be made. So I suggest below how it might be particularly relevant to some of the UK's current breaches of EU free movement law.    (......)     What are its broader implications? Let’s examine them by applying this case to two other EU...

Steve Peers Much public debate in recent weeks has centred upon the possible amendment of EU rules on the free movement of people. In particular, the think-tank Open Europe and the UK Labour party have set out policies on this issue, and Prime Minister David Cameron is expected to make an announcement of his views soon. While most of the discussion focuses on the political and economic aspects of these proposals, there is also an important legal dimension to the debate, because EU law determines how easy (or difficult) it would be to put any potential changes into effect. In particular, there are three principal ways to change the EU free movement rules: (a) by changing national law, while still remaining consistent with EU law; (b) by changing EU legislation; or (c) by amending the EU Treaties. The first course of action needs only (at most) a national parliamentary majority; the second course of action needs a Commission proposal and support from the European Parliament ...

  Steve Peers Yesterday’s important CJEU judgment in Dano concerned an application for access to benefits, not expulsion. So it has no direct impact upon the latter issue. Nevertheless, it is possible that the judgment has an indirect impact on that issue, due to the Court’s interpretation of the EU citizens’ Directive. Earlier this year, I wrote a detailed blog post on the issue of when unemployment could justify expulsions and entry bans of EU citizens. The following supplements that analysis in light of the Dano judgment.     Rules on expulsion The bulk of the rules on expulsion (and also denial of entry or exit) appear in Title VI of the EU citizens’ Directive , Articles 27-33. These rules concern expulsions or entry bans on grounds of ‘public policy, public security or public health’. However, they can’t be used to justify expulsions or entry bans of unemployed people, because Article 27(1) says that they ‘shall not be invoked to serve economic ...