Permits Foundation Responds to the EU Commission Legal Migration Consultation – And You Can Too!
12 September 2017Permits Foundation has responded to the EU Commission’s legal migration “Fitness Check”. This consultation which runs until 18 September 2017, is looking into the relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency and EU added value of legal migration legislation (for non-EU citizens). The Commission is inviting all relevant stakeholders to help them assess policy and identifying possible gaps and inconsistencies.
The Fitness Check offers the opportunity to provide feedback on several key pieces of EU legal migration legislation. In our response we focus on the Intra Corporate Transferees Directive and the EU Blue Card Scheme. We highlight the importance of family access to employment as a key factor in attracting and retaining talent.
Access to employment for partners and spouses of highly-skilled employees has been recognised as a fundamental element in both the current Blue Card and the ICT Directives. However, we are very concerned that the Commission’s revised Blue Card proposals include a possible labour market check for family members. We view this as a backward step that is not consistent with the objective of the proposals. Our extensive surveys show that countries that guarantee spouse access to employment are more attractive to highly skilled employees associated with international business, investment and development. Importantly, partners of employees need certainty that they can access work before the decision to relocate is made. Our response also calls on the EU institutions to reduce decision making timeframes, ensure coherence between legislation and improve information communication channels with the public.
We encourage our network to promote the Permits Foundation response. This can be done via a simple email to the Commission in support of our letter (email address in consultation link below). You can also fill in the consultation questionnaire with our response in mind.
Read the Permits Foundation response to the consultation in full – it contains our supporting letter to the Commission and details the questions we have chosen to respond to.
Access the “Fitness Check” consultation page and find out on how and where to submit your response.
