On 18 March 2016, the EU member states and Turkey concluded an agreement on the return of persons having arrived in Greece irregularly - in the hope of reducing the number of irregular migrants coming into the EU. After months of member states being unable to find a common response to the rising...

In the EU, a new discussion on temporary labour migration is underway, set in motion by a German-French initiative of Ministers of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble and Nicholas Sarkozy. Their proposal: that the EU states work more closely both to combat illegal migration and to control legal...

In its 2004 Hague Programme, the European Council prescribed the adoption of the "second phase" of the Common European Asylum System before the end of 2010. In the first phase, elaborated within the framework of the preceding Tampere Programme, minimum standards for refugee protection had been...

In July 2008, France will take on the EU Presidency. Insofar as the French government has made its goals for asylum and immigration policy known, the expectation is that it will concentrate on combating irregular immigration. This focus will likely fall short of the imperative set out by the...

The juncture is propitious to predict upcoming changes in European asylum and migration policy. After all, the institutional alterations being introduced by the Lisbon Treaty are predicated upon a desire to increase the European Union's capacity for action in home affairs. And the Stockholm...

In May 2009, after long and difficult negotiations, the EU Member States agreed on common rules to govern the immigration of highly qualified workers from outside the Union. Even before its entry into force, however, the Directive has become the target criticism. Many observers consider the...

EU member states set themselves the deadline of 2012 to complete the common European asylum system. They have a mountain to climb. Asylum-seekers' success in finding protection in Europe still depends largely upon which country they arrive in. And there is no common approach to the uneven asylum...

Like many rapidly aging countries Germany is experiencing an increasing lack of health care professionals. There is growing interest also in recruiting health care personnel in developing countries, alongside concerns about potential effects of that recruitment on health overseas. In this...