Labour market performance and migration flows - European ...

European CommissionOccasional Paper 60, Volume Iprinciples stated in the agreement and adopt detailed rules for administrative cooperation providingthe necessary management and monitoring guarantees for the application of the provisions. TheAssociation Committee 212 deals with the day-to-day implementation of the EMAA and meets at thelevel of officers. Specific sub-committees or working groups on specific issues may be created. TheEMAA with Tunisia, for instance, establishes a working group with a view to monitoring socialcooperation. In the framework of the EMAAs with Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon a specificworking group on migration and social affairs has been established. Those institutional bodies areprivileged places through which the EMP is enacted and monitored. For those of the Mediterraneancountries which take part in the European Neighbourhood policy, they are also a place for dialogueand the monitoring of the Action Plans.In short, if we were to evaluate the Euro-Med cooperation in this field after the first ten years, wewould infer that “the Barcelona Declaration remains the normative ideal […]. Instead, the day today implementation of the EMP has concentrated essentially on the economic basket, apparentlyconfirming the perception that European political objectives were ill-defined from the outset”. 213Many observers would thus agree that the EMP in its socio-cultural pillar did not live up to theexpectations that the Barcelona Declarations raised in November 1995. This is particularly relevantfor migration issues as in this field no real progress has been made since 1995 at the Euro-Medlevel. According to observers, “there is a need to review established migration policies, givencurrent trends in migration to Europe” in the framework of the Euro-Med partnership (Aubarell &Aragall 2003). In this regard the balance between “policies to control migration and the need forlabour” has still not been found. 214 Thus, taking into account these gaps, the EU was invited to“reconsider the human dimension of its Euro-Mediterranean partnership.” (Kuehnhardt, 2005).Moreover, there is consensus that “migration policies at the EMP level have not been effectiveenough to develop a common Euro-Mediterranean strategy” (Aubarell et al, 2009). This is not todeny though that at the national level, some frameworks through bilateral cooperation implementpolicies which to some extent match the Global Approach. 2153.2 The 2005 five-year Work Programme and the European Neighbourhood Policy – anopportunity for a “Global Approach to Migration” with Arab Mediterranean partners?A new impetus inspired by the “Global Approach to Migration” promoted by EU stakeholders hasbeen seen in the framework of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership since 2005, both as a consequenceof the new pillar on cooperation in Justice and Home Affairs and of the implementation of theEuropean Neighbourhood Policy. In this context, it is important to recall that much has been said onthe externalisation and extra-territorialisation of EU migration policies. This “remote controlapproach” aimed at transferring EU internal security preoccupations onto third countries and moreparticularly neighbouring countries. 216 However, in this section, we will not touch upon these aspectsbut will concentrate, instead, on the “root-cause approach” 217 which is better anchored indevelopmental concerns. We argue that that the ENP, while externalising the EU’s labour needs,meets, to some extent, the labour needs and demands of sending countries. This aspect finds itsexpression in some ENP actions which emphasise legal migration opportunities to the EU. It is also212 See article 81 EMAA Tunisia. Composed by EU Council and Commission members and members of the partner country government.213 D. Schmid, “ Interlinkages within the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership: linking Economic, Institutional and Political Reform : Conditionality Within the Euro-MediterraneanPartnership ”, EuroMesco Papers, December 2003. With the same opinion, R. A. del Sarto and T. Schumacher, “From EMP to ENP: What is at Stake with the European NeighbourhoodPolicy towards the Southern Mediterranean?”, European Foreign Affairs Review, n°10, 2005, pp. 17-38.214 On this apparent contradiction between the need for labour in EU and the unwillingness to solve that need through legal immigration policies see J-L Reiffers, “L’impact del’élargisssement de l’UE sur les partenaires Méditerranéens”, 7th Annual FEMISE Network AMCinar, April 2003.215 See for instance the Spain, French, Moroccan , Egyptian, and Mauritanian cases (Aubarell et al 2009) and (CARIM series on Circular Migration 2008) available at www.carim.org.216 For an account on the “remote control” approach, see Zolberg , 2003, “The Archaeology of ‘Remote Control’”, in Fahrmeir, A. and Faron, O. and Weil, P. (eds) Migration Control inthe North Atlantic World: The Evolution of State Practices in Europe and the United States from the French Revolution to the Inter-War Period. New York: Berghan Books quoted inAubarell et al 2009, 14.217 See Aubarell et al 2009, 14.192