Readmission Agreements of EU Member States: A Case for EU Subsidiarity or Dualism?

Abstract

This paper examines the extent to which the Treaty of Lisbon's new express European Union (EU) competence over readmissions under Article 79(3), may affirm the Union's exclusivity over return policy. We first trace the trajectory of Union competences over readmissions from implicit to shared. We then provide a brief overview of EU readmission agreements (EURAs), covering the target countries, as well as their scope and content in relation to human rights guarantees and the thirdcountry nationals clause. Based on a case-study of the French agreements on joint management of immigration flows and partnership development (AJMs) we test if despite a weak human rights record, these agreements are better placed to deal with readmission of third country nationals than those of the EU. We find that the AJMs do not compare to EURAs, notably because of the broader issue linkages they propose and the conditionality between labour market access and readmission they establish. On that basis alone, there cannot be an exclusive Union competence over readmission. However, European Union mobility partnerships (EU MPs), which establish a link of conditionality to EURAs, may strengthen arguments in favour of exclusivity, based on the principles of parallelism and subsidiarity.

Postcolonial challenges to migration control: French–Moroccan cooperation practices on forced returns

“…The idea of ‘external governance’, for example, has been put forward to explain the expanding scope of EU rules beyond EU borders (Lavenex, 2004; Lavenex and Schimmelfennig, 2009). From this perspective, the Moroccan reluctance to sign a readmission agreement is the result of insufficient incentives, be they financial or tactical, offered by the European negotiators (Coleman, 2009; Panizzon, 2011, 2012). Moreover, unlike other bordering countries negotiating readmission with the EU (e.g.…”

Three‐Level Games in EU External Migration Policy: Negotiating Mobility Partnerships in West Africa

“…The Senegalese government is less willing to compromise on readmission and will not accept the return of non‐Senegalese migrants (Interview 46). Readmission has already proven to be an obstacle in bilateral agreements with France and Spain (Panizzon, , p. 122; Roig and Huddleston, , p. 378). The Senegalese government considered it unlikely that the nature of the Mobility Partnership would provide the benefits necessary to compensate for the costs of the readmission agreement (Interview 42; 48).…”

Identity Determination Dilemmas: Whose National Are You?

“…Panizon (2012), Coleman (2009. © The Author(s) 2016 S. Carrera, Implementation of EU Readmission Agreements, SpringerBriefs in Law, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42505-4_3…”