Brussels, 18/11/2011 (Agence Europe) - On Friday 18 November 2011, the European Commission unveiled a new “Global Approach to Migration and Mobility” to encourage legal immigration to fill EU skills gaps and effectively tackle illegal immigration from Africa, Europe's neighbours, candidate countries and other non-EU states.
Updating its 2005 approach, the Commission is planning to launch “Mobility Partnerships” with Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt, extending to Libya when circumstances permit, explained Commissioner Cecilia Malmström. The Mobility Partnerships will negotiate visa facilitation for workers, students and researchers in return for strict promises from the country in question to restrict the flows of illegal immigrants through the signing of readmission agreements.
The Commission has already entered a mobility partnership with Armenia and says that for countries not able to negotiate such a deal at the moment, it will suggest dialogue on immigration and mobility issues. So far, the Commission has entered Mobility Partnerships with Moldova and Cape Verde in 2008 and Georgia in 2009, it explained in October 2011, but because the partnerships are not binding, a negotiating mandate is required from the Council of Ministers to negotiate visa and readmission deals.
The Commission hopes that the new agreements will encourage EU Member States to allow more legal immigrants into their countries at a time when several have indicated that they will be cutting their quotas of foreign workers, like France and the United Kingdom. Pointing out that member states will need at least two million new workers over the next three or four years to fill vacancies in the healthcare industries alone, the Commissioner wants the EU27 to make a gesture towards the rest of the world, aware that it is the member states that ultimately decide who can and cannot come and work in their country because the Commission has no powers in this domain. Malmstrom said that the member states should admit that they have needs that will have to be addressed.
In its report, the Commission says it plans to encourage legal immigration intelligently by opening immigration and mobility information centres in countries outside the EU to provide information about areas of the European labour market experiencing labour shortages and clear information about how to apply and the requirement to return home at the end of their contract.
These centres will also focus on asylum and immigrant protection (an innovation on 2005, explains the Commission) and the Commission will continue to finance regional protection programmes in the field of development in non-EU countries.
The new approach follows closely on the reports published in March and May this year on the democracy and shared prosperity partnerships with North Africa and the dialogue on immigration, mobility and security after the Arab Spring. The 18 November report will be discussed by EU27 interior ministers in Brussels in December. (SP/transl.fl)