Free Movement of Third Country Nationals in the European Union? Main Features, Deficiencies and Challenges of the new Mobility Rights in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice

• Date: 01 November 2009
• Published date: 01 November 2009
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0386.2009.00491.x

eulj_491791..805

Free Movement of Third Country

Nationals in the European Union? Main

Features, Def‌iciencies and Challenges of

the new Mobility Rights in the Area of

Freedom, Security and Justice

Sara Iglesias Sánchez

Abstract: The adoption of European Community (EC) Directives in the f‌ield of legal

migration has been accompanied by the introduction of intra-community mobility rights.

This new kind of right is characterised by specif‌ic features with regard to free movement

rights enjoyed by European Union (EU) citizens. Besides, existing mobility rights for

third country nationals (TCNs) raise some important problems with regard to their legal

conf‌iguration and to their relationship with other f‌ields of Community law. After having

addressed these issues, it will be argued that the current regulation of mobility rights for

TCNs does not fulf‌il the requirements of systematic coherence, and does no meet the need

to grant a level of free movement that encompasses the evolution of harmonisation in the

f‌ield of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice.

I Introduction

The concept of mobility has been recently introduced to refer to a new type of

rights endowed by EC law to TCNs, which consist mainly of certain possibilities

to move from a EU Member State to another. These mobility rights are to be found

in specif‌ic provisions of the Directives adopted in the f‌ield of migration policy,

namely, the Long-term Residents (LTR) Directive, the Directives about the admis-

sion of students and researchers and the Directive on the admission of highly quali-

f‌ied workers.

This article will analyse the emerging system of mobility rights for TCNs, which is

being developed in the framework of the new legal norms adopted in the f‌ield of

immigration policy of the EU. For that purpose, it is necessary in the f‌irst place to

examine the human rights obligations of the EU and the implications of the establish-

ment of an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice with regard to the extension of free

movement rights to TCNs. Once we have def‌ined the constitutional framework which

must determine the legal approach to the endowment of mobility rights to TCNs, we

will examine the legal basis which could be used for this purpose, the different metho-

dologies followed for its implementation, and the rationale that has inspired the

introduction of these new rights. Finally, we will analyse the provisions currently in

European Law Journal, Vol. 15, No. 6, November 2009, pp. 791–805.

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