scholarly journals Between Law and Political Truth? Member State Preferences, EU Free Movement Rules and National Immigration Law

2015 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 247-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jo SHAW

AbstractThis article explores how Member States respond to the challenge of complying with EU law obligations, whilst remaining alert to the demands of domestic politics in the context of contentious areas of EU competence. It is argued that in the case of free movement we can see the United Kingdom drawing upon three overlapping strategies in order to tread the fine line ‘between law and political truth’: it exploits as much as possible any uncertainties within free movement law; it draws upon the proximate field of domestic immigration law in order to reinterpret free movement law; and it argues for new resources to be brought into the field of free movement, in particular resources which restrict the freedoms of Member States. A discursive frame of migration governance provides the analytical construction within which the argument is located. The article is therefore a contribution to debates about (legal) Europeanisation and compliance, as well as the more specific challenges facing the UK in the latter half of the 2010s, namely a renegotiation of and referendum on EU membership.

2020 ◽  
pp. 510-543
Author(s):  
Niamh Nic Shuibhne

This chapter examines when Member States can lawfully displace the obligations placed on them by free movement law. Free movement rights can be restricted under EU law in two ways. For discriminatory or distinctly applicable restrictive measures, a derogation ground expressly provided for in the TFEU must be engaged. For indirectly or non-discriminatory measures, that is, indistinctly applicable restrictive measures, if an overriding requirement relating to the public interest can be demonstrated the measure will be lawful. In both cases, the restriction also has to satisfy a proportionality test, that is, it is both appropriate and necessary for achieving the relevant public interest objective.


Significance Cameron is gauging his counterparts' positions before presenting his reform agenda at the June 25-26 EU summit. He seeks the other EU states' support for a package of reforms that will enable him to claim that he has secured a better deal for the United Kingdom in the EU, and thus campaign for an 'in' vote in the EU membership referendum he has promised by end-2017. Cameron is seeking to build backing for some reforms that would apply across the EU, rather than only seek special treatment for the United Kingdom. However, some of the reforms he has mooted are unacceptable to many other EU states. Impacts The greatest impact of the reforms that Cameron secures could be on the scale of the split in the Conservative Party over EU membership. Some of Cameron's reforms could bring important changes across the bloc, as well as set precedents for other member states. The UK renegotiation will generate bargaining between member states that will affect their negotiation of other issues.


Author(s):  
Niamh Nic Shuibhne

This chapter examines when Member States can lawfully displace the obligations placed on them by free movement law. Free movement rights can be restricted under EU law in two ways. For discriminatory or distinctly applicable restrictive measures, if a derogation ground expressly provided for in the TFEU can be engaged. For indirectly or non-discriminatory, that is, indistinctly applicable restrictive measures, if an overriding requirement relating to the public interest that is capable of justifying a restriction of the fundamental freedoms established by the Treaty can be demonstratedIn both cases, the restriction also has to satisfy a proportionality test, that is, it is both appropriate and necessary for achieving the relevant public interest objective.


2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-312
Author(s):  
Anthony Valcke

Abstract The purpose of this article is to investigate how EU citizens’ free movement rights are applied and enforced in practice and determine whether the situation on the ground demonstrates the existence of a so-called ‘implementation gap’ involving a disconnect between, on the one hand, how the EU free movement rules are intended to operate and, on the other, their application in practice at the national level. Drawing upon a multitude of sources from Belgium, Ireland, Italy, France, Sweden and the UK, an exploration is undertaken of the ways in which this ‘implementation gap’ manifests itself through a review of the various instances where Member States have sought to restrict the exercise of free movement rights through the adoption of national measures relating to the transposition, application and enforcement of Directive 2004/38 on residence rights.


2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-108
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Squintani ◽  
Jon Rakipi

The need to ensure a uniform interpretation and effective application of the large corpus of EU environmental regulation in the jurisdictions of the Member States remains a task of pivotal importance for the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). A quick look at the CURIA database reveals that many judgments are handed down every year to clarify the meaning of EU environmental provisions. It is therefore important to study the proper functioning of the tandem composed of the CJEU and the national courts in this field of EU law. In that sense, this article responds to Bogojević’s call ‘to draw a grander map of judicial dialogues initiated across various Member States’. More specifically, the topic investigated by this article is how the United Kingdom (UK) courts have followed up on responses received from the CJEU to their preliminary reference requests in the field of EU environmental law, from the UK’s accession in 1972 until January 2017. All the cases we have retrieved from the UK show various degrees of willingness to cooperate with the CJEU. This article highlights the existence of three trends: full cooperation, fragmented cooperation and presumed cooperation.


Author(s):  
Ludovic Highman

On such divisive issues as EU membership and, consequently, the post-Brexit relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union, it is unsurprising that Theresa May’s government has been torn between a “hard” and a “soft” Brexit. As of June 2018, there is still no indication of which approach will prevail, putting at risk UK universities’ participation in the Erasmus+ program, which has provided, among other things, opportunities for over four million Europeans to study, train, and volunteer abroad since its inception. Full access to EU research funds is also at risk. Universities cannot depend on the UK government’s help in securing the frameworks allowing for continuity. In such a context, universities have started to use their limited resources to secure bilateral international and European links to foster research collaboration and staff and student mobility, post-Brexit.


Author(s):  
Olha Ovechkina

In connection with the decision to withdraw the UK from the EU a number of companies will need to take into account that from 1 January 2021 EU law will no longer apply to the United Kingdom and will become a "third country" for EU Member States, unless the provisions of bilateral agreements or multilateral trade agreements. This means that the four European freedoms (movement of goods, services, labor and capital) will no longer apply to UK companies to the same extent as they did during the UK's EU membership. The purpose of the article is to study, first of all, the peculiarities of the influence of Great Britain's withdrawal from the European Union on the legal regulation of the status of European legal entities. Brexit results in the inability to register European companies and European economic interest groups in the UK. Such companies already registered before 01.01.2021 have the opportunity to move their place of registration to an EU Member State. These provisions are defined in Regulations 2018 (2018/1298) and Regulations 2018 (2018/1299).British companies with branches in EU Member States will now be subject to the rules applicable to third-country companies, which provide additional information on their activities. In the EU, many countries apply the criterion of actual location, which causes, among other things, the problem of non-recognition of legal entities established in the country where the criterion of incorporation is used (including the United Kingdom), at the same time as the governing bodies of such legal entities the state where the settlement criterion is applied. Therefore, to reduce the likelihood of possible non-recognition of British companies, given the location of the board of such a legal entity in the state where the residency criterion applies, it seems appropriate to consider reincarnation at the actual location of such a company. Reducing the risks of these negative consequences in connection with Brexit on cross-border activities of legal entities is possible by concluding interstate bilateral and multilateral agreements that would contain unified rules on conflict of law regulation of the status of legal entities.


Author(s):  
Radovan Malachta

The paper follows up on the arguments introduced in the author’s article Mutual Trust as a Way to an Unconditional Automatic Recognition of Foreign Judgments. This paper, titled Mutual Trust between the Member States of the European Union and the United Kingdom after Brexit: Overview discusses, whether there has been a loss of mutual trust between the European Union and the United Kingdom after Brexit. The UK, similarly to EU Member States, has been entrusted with the area of recognition and enforcement of judgements thus far. Should the Member States decrease the level of mutual trust in relation to the UK only because the UK ceased to be part of the EU after 47 years? Practically overnight, more precisely, the day after the transitional period, should the Member States trust the UK less in the light of legislative changes? The article also outlines general possibilities that the UK has regarding which international convention it may accede to. Instead of going into depth, the article presents a basic overview. However, this does not prevent the article to answer, in addition to the questions asked above, how a choice of access to an international convention could affect the level of mutual trust between the UK and EU Member States.


Author(s):  
Francesco Martucci

‘Another Legal Monster?’ That was the question asked by the Law Department of the European University Institute on 16 February 2012 in a debate about the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union (TSCG), also known as the Fiscal Compact Treaty. On 2 March 2012, twenty-five Member States of the European Union minus the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic signed the TSCG. A month before, on 2 February 2012, the euro area Member States signed the Treaty Establishing the European Stability Mechanism (ESM Treaty), another legal monster. In both cases, the monstrosity lies in the fact that Member States have preferred to conclude an international treaty, rather than to use the European Union (EU) institutional system. Why did the European Commission not propose a legislative act to establish a financial assistance mechanism in the Eurozone and strengthen the fiscal discipline in the EU? Does this mean the end of community method and a victory for the intergovernmental method? As Herman Van Rompuy commented about the crisis; ‘often the choice is not between the community method and the intergovernmental method, but between a co-ordinated European position and nothing at all’. In 2010, Angela Merkel defended her vision of a new ‘Union Method’ in a speech held at the College of Europe. This approach can be defined by the following description: ‘co-ordinated action in a spirit of solidarity–each of us in the area for which we are responsible but all working towards the same goal’. Each of us means the European institutions and Member States. The new ‘Euro-international’ treaties (or inter se treaties) raise a number of questions regarding their compatibility with EU law, implications for the Union legal system, institutional balance, national sovereignty and democratic accountability. These questions are all the more important because international treaties raise a number of questions on their compatibility with EU law, implications for the Union legal system and institutional balance.


Author(s):  
Federico Fabbrini

This chapter analyses the European Union during Brexit, explaining how the EU institutions and Member States reacted to the UK’s decision to leave the EU. It outlines how they went about this in the course of the withdrawal negotiations. The EU institutions and Member States managed to adopt a very united stance vis-à-vis a withdrawing state, establishing effective institutional mechanisms and succeeding in imposing their strategic preferences in the negotiations with the UK. Nevertheless, the EU was also absorbed during Brexit by internal preparations to face both the scenario of a ‘hard Brexit’—the UK leaving the EU with no deal—and of a ‘no Brexit’—with the UK subsequently delaying exit and extending its EU membership. Finally, during Brexit the EU increasingly started working as a union of 27 Member States—the EU27—which in this format opened a debate on the future of Europe and developed new policy initiatives, especially in the field of defence and military cooperation.


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