Communication: Enhancing legal pathways to Europe: an indispensable part of a balanced and comprehensive migration policy

Further information:

Since 2003, the EU has developed a broad range of instruments to put in place a common framework for the management of legal migration, while Member States remain competent to determine the number of labour migrants to be admitted from third countries. This framework offers a number of opportunities for third-country nationals who wish to benefit from legal migration to Europe, namely as workers, including the highly skilled ones, students or researchers, as well as through family reunification.

An overall evaluation of the Union legislation on legal migration has been carried out in the last two years under a fitness check and the Commission will publish the results of this evaluation at a later stage. With this in mind, this Communication does not address all legal pathways but focuses on the humanitarian avenue of resettlement and the avenues for labour migration.

Background:

Global migration and mobility already are and will continue to be inherent features of the 21st century. In this context, the EU is committed to continue taking all the necessary steps to achieve a fair and balanced EU migration policy, founded on common values, and which effectively manages both irregular and regular migration flows in a comprehensive manner.

In its June 2018 conclusions, the European Council reconfirmed that a precondition for a functioning EU migration policy is a comprehensive approach, where actions both on the internal and external sides go hand in hand to ensure an effective control of the EU’s external borders, a firm return policy and a well-managed legal migration and asylum policy.