EU Migration Law, Human Rights and Democratic Principles

Unipi Team Leader: Marcello Di Filippo, Department of Political Science

Migration flows towards Europe and inside Europe are a stable phenomenon, but continuouslyevolving, and raising new questions and challenges to Member States’ and EU policymakers.Since the entry into force of the Schengen Agreements and of the Amsterdam Treaty, aparticularly evident European-wide dimension of Migration Law began to develop. The LisbonTreaty reinforced this trend. At the same time, the performance of the same EU with regards to therespect of human rights and of democratic principles in shaping its migratory policy is often calledinto question, both in its internal dimension and in the context of international relations with thirdcountries.The module was conceived in order to promote in a stable way the critical study of EU Migration Law,the spreading of knowledge among interested persons and future professionals in the field ofmigration management, the debate on recent and future developments of the EU action on thesubject matter.Both the regime of free circulation for EU nationals and the regime of immigration of TCNs fromoutside the EU and of circulation inside the EU have been investigated. The purpose was to emphasize ifthe striking differences between the two legal regimes are still tenable, or are a source of distortiondetrimental not only to the migrants, but also to the EU itself and its objectives. It has also beenpointed out how the restrictive features of the regime on TCN risk to “contaminate” the liberalregime of free circulation of EU nationals and of their family members.Asylum policy and international relations with transit and sending countries receivedconsiderable attention.Finally, a part of the teaching and research activities has concerned the experiences carried out inother regional circles, in order to extract insights and cues for both “EU legal studies” and“Comparative regional studies” in migration governance.During the implementation of the Module additional activities were carried out, taking advantage of the networking and visibility effect of the Module and willing to widen the circle of beneficiaries of the contents originated by the staff involved in the project.

Start date: 01-09-2015

End date: 31-08-2018

EU Grant: 28.236 € 

Project website: http://migration.jus.unipi.it/jm-module/