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European Parliament scrutiny of Frontex
Regulation (EU) 2019/1896 transformed Frontex into the European Border and Coast Guard Agency and considerably increased its tasks, powers, responsibilities and budget. The regulation extended the agency's tasks and competences while also balancing them with stronger fundamental rights safeguards and increased liability and accountability, including by giving the European Parliament oversight of the agency's activities. As part of this oversight, Parliament endorses the agency's budget, can ask the ...
Reception of asylum-seekers – Recast directive
States must treat asylum-seekers and refugees according to the appropriate standards laid down in human rights and refugee law. The 2015 migration crisis revealed wide divergences in the level of reception conditions provided by Member States, which have persisted until today. While some are facing problems in ensuring adequate and dignified treatment of applicants, in others the standards of reception provided are more generous. This has led to secondary movements of asylum-seekers and refugees, ...
Reforming asylum and migration management
In September 2020, the European Commission submitted a proposal on asylum and migration management, to replace the 2013 Dublin Regulation that determines the EU Member State responsible for examining asylum applications. While the proposal 'essentially preserves' the current criteria for determining this responsibility, it would also make changes and additions to the regulation, especially on solidarity and responsibility-sharing for asylum-seekers among Member States. The proposal comes after a ...
Cross-border claims to looted art
This study addresses cross-border restitution claims to looted art, considering Nazi-looted art and colonial takings, but also more recent cultural losses resulting from illicit trafficking. Although these categories differ considerably, commonalties exist. The study highlights blind spots in the legal and policy frameworks and formulates recommendations on how these could be bridged. This study was commissioned by the European Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional ...
European Commercial Contract Law
This study – commissioned by the Policy Department C at the request of the Committee on Legal Affairs – aims at discussing the reasons why the law chosen in commercial contracts is largely non-European and non-member state law. To do so, it first provides an overview of the relevant academic and policy efforts underwent to formulate a European contract law. Then it moves on to touch upon a broad spectrum of matters emerging both from international reports on the adjudication and the functioning of ...
Plenary round-up – October I 2023
During the October I plenary session Members held a number of debates, including on the need for speedy adoption of the EU asylum and migration package. Other debates focused on: precarity in Europe and the need to aid the deprived; large-scale corrupt sales of Schengen visas; medicine shortages and EU strategic healthcare autonomy; the European Central Bank's 10th consecutive increase in reference interest rates; proposals to extend glyphosate use; and on the Energy Charter Treaty. In the external ...
Posting of third-country nationals in the EU
Under EU rules, EU citizens are free to reside and work in any Member State, and can be posted to any other EU country to provide a service job. By contrast, labour migration by third-country nationals (TCNs) is controlled by a different regulatory framework. However, Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) case law provides that TCNs with work and residence permits in one Member State may be posted across the EU to perform temporary work. The posting of TCN workers is increasingly being used ...
Substitute impact assessment: Proposal for a regulation addressing situations of instrumentalisation in the field of migration and asylum
This substitute impact assessment of the European Commission's proposal for a regulation addressing situations of instrumentalisation in the field of migration and asylum was requested by the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) in the absence of a European Commission impact assessment accompanying the proposal. This substitute IA reviews the problem identified by the Commission and the objectives of the instrumentalisation proposal. It studies the proposal's ...
Revised rules on the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA)
On 1 June 2023, the European Commission presented the maritime safety package, focused on introducing modernised maritime safety and security rules on port state and flag state control, maritime accident investigation and ship source pollution. The package also includes a proposal to revise the Regulation on the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA). The revised regulation would give EMSA new and more numerous tasks since the last major revision of its mandate in 2013 and aim to make it 'future ...
Detention of migrants: A measure of last resort
Detention is the confinement of a migrant, asylum seeker or refugee by a Member State, where the applicant is deprived of his or her freedom of movement. However, detention should only be a measure of last resort, applied after a careful and individual examination of each case. This stems not only from the EU Member States' obligations under international human rights law regarding the right to liberty and health, but also from relevant EU law provisions governing asylum and return procedures and ...