The immigration process and the Eastern Border of Europe

Résumé du document

In 2004, the admission of ten new States within the European Union has expanded the European borders to the East. Now, the Union has common borders with countries such as Belarus, Ukraine and the Federation of Russia, whose standards of living or rate of employment are less important than those of the new members, apart from those of the fifteen old members. This discrepancy will certainly increase as the integration on the European Union is likely to benefit to the development of the new members. Moreover, because of the Shengen agreements, there is a freedom of movement within the "Shengen space". That is why, the perspective of the integration made the Western European countries fear they might have to face a surge of immigrants, not only from the new member states but also from their new neighbors. As sociologist Jacques Barou puts it "The problem of these new members of the European Union is far more likely to result from their difficulties to control the entrances through their oriental borders than to limit the exodus of their nationals through occidental borders?.

Extraits

[...] That is why a large number of rules have been imposed to the new members. Before their integration, the latter had to adopt a legislation referring to the Shengen agreement, the Maastricht and Amsterdam treaties and the Dublin convention on asylum.[15] The Alien law adopted by Poland in 1997, and the Hungarian legislation of 1994 are cases in point. As far as the Czech Republic is concerned, it has considerably modified its legislation to make it compatible with the European legislation: for instance, it has changed its immigration policy, implementing a program to select skilled workers for instance.[16] If we have a look at the rapports of the European Commission[17], we can notice that annually, before the integration of the Czech Republic, it studied how the State did conform to the Community acquis. [...]

[...] It is true that, as liberal democracies, the European Union States might face problem to solve the contradiction between their principles and the restrictive policy they are implementing, notably toward asylum seekers. And these contradictions lead to divergent national policies and a lack of cohesion among them. But in these times of unemployment, I don't think that Western European countries will be ready to allow the implementation of such a right while it may be in the interest of the new members from Central and Eastern Europe. [...]

[...] Then, the report of 2001 praised the Czech Republic for having made many progress in these fields, and eventually, in 2002 a last report stated that the country had integrated the whole community acquis in its own legislation. This shows us how important the European control over the border policy of the Eastern States of the EU is: it seeks to be sure that they are going to adopt a legislation fitting with the community acquis and tends to impose a kind of harmonization within the Eastern States. However, such a harmonization is far from being reached. [...]

[...] That is why the Eastern border of the European Union is now at the crux of the debates. In a first part, we will see that immigration flows have become structural to this border, then we will see how the European Union wants to adopt a coherent policy to curb migration flows and in a last part, we will wonder how the different actors may have to act in order to adapt to these transformations. One of the most important point is that the Eastern border of the EU is typical of a border where migration has become “structurally embedded in the economies and societies [ ] whether in the form of remittances, cheap labour, or domestic services.”. [...]

[...] Before the Second World War, France and the United Kingdom had organised flows of workforces coming from Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Czechia and Slovaquia . Then these flows slowed down when most of these countries entered the Soviet bloc. When the Iron Curtain fell down, the Western European countries fear they might have to face a surge of immigrants but it had been limited to Germany and Austria and then it quickly decreased. Nevertheless, the integration within the EU and their economic development lead to a change in the role played by the countries near this border. [...]