REGINE Regularisations in Europe Final Report - European ...

3.3.3.3 Persons whose refugee status has been withdrawn
By its very nature, refugee status is a temporary, transitory status which eventually should lead to
either ‘local integration’ (including acquisition of citizenship) or repatriation. 134 Against this
background, article 11 of Council Directive 2004/83/EC 135 (‘Qualification Directive’) defines a set of
conditions under which refugees cease to be refugees. 136 These include return to the country of
nationality or previous residence from which he or she has fled, re-acquisition of his or her former
nationality, acquisition of a another states’ nationality and, importantly, if the reasons for granting a
refugee status cease to exist. In the latter case, the expectation is that (former) refugees will leave the
country of asylum, either voluntarily or under compulsion. 137 Withdrawing refugee status without
consideration of the feasibility of return, however, risks systematically creating a semi-legal (nondeportable)
category of aliens. 138 The Commission proposal to extent the scope of the Long-term
Residence Directive to persons under subsidiary protection and refugees can be seen as a sensible first
step, but it does not provide any mechanism for persons resident for less than five years (see also
below, §3.3.5).
Related proposal(s):Option 8
3.3.3.4 Retired persons with limited pension resources
Third country nationals who are dependent on pension arrangements external to the EU are
particularly vulnerable to exchange rate fluctuations, as well as to inadequate uprating of benefits for
satisfying cost of living increases in their country of residence. These problems are further
compounded when Member States set minimum resources levels at a high rate, thus disqualifying
retired TCNs with low pensions from lawful residence. In the case of future migration flows, the high
personal resources requirement may well be prudent public policy; a distinction has to be drawn
between potential migrants and those with many years of residence. There is little to be gained from
134 The Commissions Policy Plan on Asylum underlines the importance of resettlement the third ‘durable
solution’ as an instrument of EU asylum policy (see Communication from the Commission to the European
Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of Regions, Policy
Plan on Asylum: An Integrated Approach to Protection across the EU. Brussels, 17 June 2008,
COM(2008)360). Although resettlement is an important instrument of asylum policy in a global perspective, it
mainly applies to insecure or overburdened first countries of asylum outside the Union context. Analytically, it
is in itself not a durable solution in the same sense as the other two durable solutions; also at the end of
resettlement, there should be either repatriation or local integration.
135 Council Directive 2004/83/EC of 29 April 2004 on minimum standards for the qualification and status of
third country nationals or stateless persons as refugees or as persons who otherwise need international protection
and the content of the protection granted
136 Article 14 in turn defines conditions for the revocation of refugee status on exclusion grounds (as defined by
Article 12).
137 It should be noted that although most Member States do have rules on the loss of refugee status, it seems that
few countries systematically review refugees’ status in respect to whether the grounds for granting refugee
status still exist.
138 In Germany, for example, refugee status is granted for three years, after which a case is reviewed as to
whether the grounds of granting refugee status still apply. In a significant number of cases, refugee status is
withdrawn, because of changed circumstances in the country of origin. However, the majority of former
refugees apparently remain in the country under toleration status (comment, Harald Lederer, Federal Office for
Migration and Refugees, asylum and refugees working group, 2 nd official PROMINSTAT workshop, 12-13 June
2008, Bamberg).
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