The Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee of the European Parliament is considering the 654 amendments, tabled in February 2019, to the European Commission’s September 2018 proposal to recast the Return Directive. The Directive is the main piece of EU legislation governing the procedures and criteria to be applied by Member States when returning irregularly staying third-country nationals, and a cornerstone of the EU return policy. Continue reading
Currently, there are at least 86 different versions of identity cards (ID cards) and 181 types of residence documents in circulation in the EU. The Free Movement Directive (2004/38/EC) stipulates the conditions that EU citizens and their third-country-national family members need to meet in order to exercise their right of free movement and residence within the Union. Continue reading
The European Union faces major structural and demographic challenges. To maintain its position as world-leading economy, the EU needs to attract more skilled labour. Students from third countries are an important source of skilled workers, while the EU has a shortage of the researchers and innovators desperately required if the Union is to meet its … Continue reading
Granting residence permits to non-EU citizens who make substantial investments seems to be a common practice for a number of EU Member States (MS). Some of them, like recently Malta, go further by granting third-country investors full citizenship although mostly after first granting residence rights (e.g. Austria, Bulgaria and Cyprus). Since Article 21 of the … Continue reading