REGINE Regularisations in Europe Final Report - European ...

Although the most significant regularisation programmes usually address both residence and work
status, there are important examples of programmes that seek only to address the work status of nonnationals
in an irregular situation or their compliance with broader employment regularisations. For
example, the current amnesty for irregularly employed care workers in Austria primarily seeks
accommodation of the specific nature of care work by amending employment regulations; indeed,
non-compliance with employment and social security provisions (rather than rules regulating nonnationals’
access to employment) were identified as the main issue of concern. While such
programmes (as well as programmes targeting non-nationals without access to employment) may
appear to be outside the scope of a study whose remit is to map and analyse “practices in the area of
regularisation of illegally staying third-country nationals”, 30 in fact, the three dimensions – legal
residence, access to employment and legal employment [compliance with employment, tax and social
security regulations] – are closely intertwined. Not only do regularisation programmes designed to
reduce the number of illegally resident third country nationals typically specify current employment
(or an employment record) as a condition for regularisation, but non-nationals in breach of work
permit or wider employment regulations are usually also in breach of conditions for legal residence:
technically, non-nationals not covered by freedom of movement rights may be viewed as illegally
resident if found in an irregular work situation. 31
1.5 Programmes and mechanisms for regularisation
Although there exists a wide range of policies across Member States for granting a regularised status,
two broad and fairly distinct procedures can be identified for this purpose. For these, we employ the
terminology of ‘programmes’ and ‘mechanisms’ – the former indicating a time-limited procedure
(frequently, but not necessarily, involving a large number of applicants), and the latter indicating a
more open-ended policy that typically involves individual applications and, in most cases, a smaller
number of applicants. 32
Thus, the following definitions have been developed and Member States’ practices analysed in
accordance with this framework.
Regularisation Programme
A regularisation programme is defined as a specific regularisation procedure which (1) does
not form part of the regular migration policy framework, (2) runs for a limited period of time
and (3) targets specific categories of non-nationals in an irregular situation.
30 The Austrian programme in fact explicitly excludes third country nationals without a residence title or with a
restricted residence title not entitling work and thus does not qualify as a regularisation programme.
31 Thus, a long-term resident as defined by Council Directive 2003/109/EC may lose his/her right to residence
only if “he/she constitutes an actual and sufficiently serious threat to public policy or public security” [Article
12 (1), 2003/109/EC].
32 One of the main exceptions is France, where 101,479 persons were regularised between 2000 and 2006 on the
basis of personal and family ties (80,401) and regularisation after 10 years of residence (21,078). Altogether,
regularisations in France account for more than 8% of all admissions during this period. The total number of
regularisations between 2000 and 2006 is therefore substantially higher than the estimated 87,000 persons
regularised in the 1997/98 regularisation programme (see REGINE country study on France).
8