Written by Steven Blaakman
Europe is one of the world’s primary destinations for international migrants. In 2024, the region hosted approximately 94 million migrants, the highest number of any region in the world. The biggest share enter via legal means. The EU is experiencing skills shortages, which is partly because of its ageing population, and migrants could play a role in helping to plug them. The EU shares competence on migration and asylum policies with its Member States; EU legislation plays a significant role in managing legal migration, although its impact varies by type of migration.
Nonetheless, data consistently show that most EU legal migration tools are under-used. Blue Cards, an EU initiative to attract highly skilled workers, account for only a fraction of permits issued for employment reasons and few EU countries make significant use of them, which would suggest more work is needed to make them an attractive option. Similarly, the Single Permit, which is a combined work and residency permit, is mostly used by just a handful of EU countries. In recent years, the EU has also launched new initiatives with non-EU countries such as Talent Partnerships and a Talent Pool, but it is too early to say anything about their impact. There is also a directive for seasonal workers, but again only a few EU countries make much use of it.
The EU plays an important role when it comes to asylum by setting common standards, clarifying which EU country is responsible for processing an application, and encouraging solidarity. The European Commission has proposed a Return Regulation to make it easer and faster to return non-EU citizens who were unsuccessful in their bid to obtain asylum. It includes the possibility to create return hubs in non-EU countries, which many Member States are interested in. Temporary protection was used for the first time to help Ukrainians after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Read the complete briefing on ‘Legal migration to the EU‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.
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