What role for the EU?

The EU is involved in many policy areas, some where it has been granted exclusive competence and others where competences are shared with Member States. The notion behind this separation of tasks is that the EU institutions should play a decisive role only where Member State policies create externalities for other Member States and where a strong ‘economies of scale’ argument exists. Migration policy is a Member State competence, though some aspects, such as attracting highly qualified foreigners, are also dealt with at the EU level.

The Students and Researchers Directive and the Blue Card Directive are two such EU endeavours in what previously had been a Member State domain. EU added value rests on a common interest in attracting foreign talent and the additional global attractiveness of a European approach. The latter stems from the fact that coordination bringing rights at the European level – especially rights related to EU mobility – makes each country more attractive for third-country nationals than similar national schemes would. This effect is particularly large for small countries, which may otherwise struggle to attract talented individuals to what are from a global perspective small local labour markets.

For low- and medium-qualified third-country nationals, the attractiveness of EU countries lies primarily, but not exclusively, in the potential for a higher standard of living. Stated in economic terms, there is not much global competition for these segments of the labour force. Hence, there is much less scope for EU coordination to enhance attractiveness to them. For these reasons, we see little added value in expanding the scope of the proposed recast of the Blue Card Directive to the low- and medium- qualified.

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In addition, there may be an important political trade-off between the inclusiveness of the Blue Card (i.e. accessibility for third-country nationals) and the rights conferred to holders. From an economic perspective, a strong set of rights (in particular mobility rights) for highly skilled people is preferable to a set of more limited rights granted to a broader set of educational levels. Reducing mobility rights for the highly qualified severely limits the attractiveness of a European Blue Card, and thus the number of people applying; not granting similar European rights to low-skilled workers hardly affects Member States’ ability to attract individuals from this segment of the labour market.

The proposed changes to the Blue Card Directive seek to ensure that Member States make full use of the Blue Card, to enhance its added value to holders and to make it more accessible. In detail, the Commission plans to replace national schemes with the Blue Card so that it no longer competes with them. Additionally, the Blue Card processing time is to be reduced, equivalent work experience is to be anchored as an alternative to formal qualifications, the intra-EU labour mobility of third-country nationals is to be facilitated, long-term residence is to be made easier to obtain, refugees are to be able to gain access to the Blue Card procedure if they meet the general criteria and family reunification is to be eased. These measures will improve the attractiveness of the Blue Card. Finally yet importantly, the Blue Card is to be made more accessible by lowering the minimum salary threshold in order to qualify for the Blue Card scheme (from a fixed 1.5 times the national average to a flexible band of 1.0–1.4 times the average) and lower thresholds are to be introduced for recent graduates and workers in sectors with labour shortages – which the Member States can determine individually.

The proposed revision of the Blue Card Directive and the latest Students and Researchers Directive have focused on aspects of highly skilled immigration where the EU has added value to offer: facilitating the labour mobility of third-country nationals. The Blue Card proposal, if adopted in its current form, is well designed and would amplify the benefits of a European approach to the international talent game. The key to its success is implementation by the domestic administrations combined with raising awareness of the revised Blue Card and its benefits for international talent. Otherwise, the Blue Card will not have a substantial impact on the attractiveness of the EU.

Realistically, even with the proposed changes, the economic gains are relatively small. The European Commission estimates the economic gains from the new Blue Card scheme to range between €1.4 and 6.2 billion

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annually.19 _{However, for this to materialise, the Blue Card will have to}

become substantially more popular than domestic schemes have managed in the past, which should be regarded as a very optimistic scenario. An ex post impact assessment on the net – i.e. new Blue Card holders corrected for the lower uptake of national schemes – should be carefully conducted in order to evaluate the added value in the medium term.

10.6

Conclusion

A well-functioning Blue Card scheme covering highly qualified and highly skilled individuals should yield benefits to the Union overall and render individual Member States more attractive to foreign talent. Hence, the suggested revision of the Blue Card Directive is well measured and likely to provide a positive impetus.

Given the fragmented nature of national labour markets in terms of unemployment, occupations with skill shortages and different demographic challenges, there is no need for EU regulation on access for low- and medium-skilled individuals. In fact, broadening the scope of the suggested revision would have been counter-productive, as the rights conferred to holders of the Blue Card would likely have been substantially watered down in negotiations with the European Parliament and Council.

Lowering the threshold and eliminating competition with national schemes should substantially increase the uptake and attractiveness of the Blue Card. Moreover, by enhancing the labour mobility of third-country nationals the EU is addressing the key added value of a European approach.

19 _{See European Commission, “Delivering the European Agenda on Migration:}

Commission presents Action Plan on Integration and reforms ‘Blue Card’ scheme for highly skilled workers from outside the EU”, Press Release, Brussels, 2016 (http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-2041_en.htm).

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References

Barslund, M. and M. Busse (2016), “The proposed mobility package may not have much effect on mobility, but what about politics?”, CEPS Commentary, CEPS, Brussels (www.ceps.eu/publications/proposed- mobility-package-may-not-have-much-effect-mobility-what-about- politics).

Eisele, K. (2013), “Why come here if I can go there? Assessing the ‘Attractiveness’ of the EU’s Blue Card Directive for ‘Highly Qualified’ Immigrants”, CEPS Paper in Liberty and Security in Europe No. 60, CEPS, Brussels.

Institute of International Education (2016), “International Students in the United States”, New York, NY (http://www.iie.org/Services/Project- Atlas/United-States/International-Students-In-US#.WMqstfKgSGI). Morehouse, C. and M. Busse (2014), How to keep a competitive edge in the talent

game: Lessons for the EU from China and the US, Lanham, MD: Rowman &

Littlefield (www.rowmaninternational.com/books/how-to-keep-a-

competitive-edge-in-the-talent-game).

National Center for Education Statistics (2016), “Fast Facts”, Washington, D.C. (https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372).

Wiesbrock, A. (2010), “Free movement of third-country nationals in the European Union: The illusion of inclusion”, European Law Review, Vol. 35, No. 4, pp. 455–475.

PART III

LEGAL MIGRATION THROUGH

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11.

LEGAL MIGRATION IN THE EU’S EXTERNAL

POLICY:AN OBJECTIVE OR A BARGAINING

CHIP?

AGNIESZKA WEINAR

11.1

Introduction

The year 2016 changed the geopolitics of international relations for the EU. Brexit, Russia’s assertiveness in Syria and the US elections put the EU in a place it has not been for the last 70 years. And all this came just after 2015, which reshaped the internal landscape of migration policy-making. Consequently, as regards the external dimension of EU migration policy, the challenges only began to mount. In an unstable environment, the established ways of doing things will not suffice.

The EU’s internal crisis caused by the significant immigration flows of 2015 revealed the importance of public support for migration policies. EU policy-makers diagnosed the perceived inability of the EU to control its borders as an obstacle to such support. It has never been clear what the real objectives of EU migration policy are, but today they seem much more apparent: they are all about border management. Indeed, cooperation with the countries of origin and transit is supposed to engage other countries in the control of EU borders. This is a building block of an array of EU instruments, such as Mobility Partnerships or migration and mobility dialogues. What is thus the place of legal migration in this conundrum? After all, for years the EU has stressed the importance of ‘orderly migration flows’ for an ‘ageing workforce’ and EU labour markets.

Legal migration seems to be less of an objective than a bargaining chip in negotiations to obtain cooperation on border management. Such an approach has been more successful in some parts of the world than in others, and probably for reasons not related to the packages actually negotiated. Unfortunately, legal migration seems to be an afterthought of EU cooperation on migration. There is little in sight that would suggest this can change. In the following sections, this chapter considers two factors that shape cooperation on legal migration with the non-EU countries post-2016:

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the EU’s negotiating power and the place of legal migration in the negotiated deals.