Labour market performance and migration flows - European ...

European CommissionOccasional Paper 60, Volume Ilegislative measures related to economic migrants 139 such as the conditions of entry and residenceof economic migrants. More specifically, it puts forward five legislative proposals on economicimmigration and divides economic migrants into four categories: highly qualified workers, seasonalworkers, remunerated trainees and intra-corporate transferees. It also encourages circular migrationas a strategy that responds to “labour needs in Member States while contributing, through eventualreturn, to the development of countries of origin and offering skills and other gains to participatingmigrants.” 140On the other hand, there is increasingly a sense that a common EU migration policy mustencompass the needs of origin countries and should resort to new cooperative mechanisms whichare founded more on a global than on a solely EU-based approach. 141 This is why the GlobalApproach to Migration in December 2005 highlights the need for a multilateral path as migrationpatterns have defied geographical and narrow institutional arrangements. The document drawsattention to “how best to share information on legal migration and labour-market opportunities”. 142However, it is disputable on which grounds this approach is “global”: in its geographic scope, or inthe sense that it intends to take into consideration the interests of all parties or all the stages of themigration process, including the root causes of migration? If this is the case, and, however,enlightened this approach may be, concrete instruments that encompass these objectives areprecariously defined and are at least partially missing. In the following paragraphs, the mainshortcomings of the Global Approach as a framework that could provide an adequate platform forthe Euro-Arab Mediterranean zone will be briefly outlined. This critical appraisal is very importantinasmuch as it allows us to ascertain why this approach needs to be refined in helping managelabour and migration exigencies.Upon analyzing the 2005 approach to migration which puts forward legislative proposals revolvingaround four categories of economic migrants (highly-qualified workers, seasonal workers,remunerated trainees and intra-corporate transferees), one is first inclined to inquire whether theGlobal Approach to Migration only partially addresses economic migrants’ profile and flows, andwhether it would really be able to lay the foundations for a holistic approach dealing with alleconomic emigrants, including those low and the medium-skilled who are not seasonal workers. Itis clear that the inherent tensions at the EU level, and more precisely, the tensions between the EUCommission and the EU member states, partly explain and justify the incompleteness of theapproach. Still, it is striking that the approach as it has been defined to date cannot provide acomprehensive mechanism that responds to all migration imperatives and realities in the Euro-ArabMediterranean zone.http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/com/2005/com2005_0669en01.pdf.139 This communication envisaged, for the period from 2007 to 2009, the adoption of four specific directives on labour immigration which tackle simplified admission procedures andconditions for certain categories of migrants: highly skilled migrants, seasonal migrants, remunerated trainees and intra-corporate transferees.140 European Commission, “Policy Plan on Legal Migration” {SEC(2005)1680,http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/en/com/2005/com2005_0669en01.pdf., p. 24.141 This approach draws upon the importance of developing a global approach that would highlight cooperation among regions. See Antoine Pecoud and Paul de Guchteneire,“Introduction: the Migration without Borders Scenario,” , p. 25 in Migration without Borders: Essays on the Free Movement of People, (UNESCO-Bergahn books).142 See “Global Approach to Migration: Priority Actions Focusing on Africa and the Mediterranean”, http://register.consilium.eu.int/pdf/en/05/st15/st15744.en05.pdf.170