REGINE Regularisations in Europe Final Report - European ...

4 Government positions on policy 155
4.1 Views on national policies for regularisation
Concerning the need for policy on regularisation at the national level, 10 Member States either did not
express an opinion or failed to return the questionnaire. Three Member States (the Slovak Rep.,
Romania, Bulgaria) emphasise that a mechanism is sufficient policy; four (Belgium, Portugal, Spain,
Greece) identify management of informal employment as a key factor in the need for programmes;
and four (France, Greece, Italy, Poland) see regularisation programmes as an important tool in
migration management. One Member State (Austria) considers that humanitarian reasons are the only
legitimate reason for regularisation; six other Member States emphasise humanitarian reasons, along
with several other factors (Belgium, Hungary, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Spain). One Member
State (France) considers a regularisation mechanism to be an important tool in dealing with nondeportable
aliens; one (Greece) emphasises the criterion of social integration of immigrant
populations for its recent regularisation policy. The Member States’ positions more or less correspond
with actual practice over the last decade, i.e. with a majority using the policy instrument (albeit with
slightly different objectives).
Of those Member States expressing extreme reservations about regularisation policy, four (Austria,
Belgium, France, Germany) claim that programmes constitute a pull-factor for future illegal
migration; one (the Czech Rep.) has the view that it is not an effective policy, or is a last-resort policy
(Bulgaria), while Finland is of the opinion that it is not a suitable policy instrument for managing
migration. Slovenia considers that regularisation cannot reduce illegal flows, but might cause them to
increase. Overall, there are eight expressions of extreme reservation compared with 25 expressions of
support for some sort of regularisation policy instrument(s): these total more than the number of MS
respondents, owing to complex positions adopted by many MS.
4.2 Views on policy impact on other EU MS
There is an important claim, made by several Member States, that regularisation programmes impact
heavily on other MS. Despite our insistence in the questionnaire that evidence or research be provided
to back up any claims, only three were able to do so. These were the Czech Republic, Ireland and
Poland. The Czech Rep. notes that it is a transit route to Italy; Ireland notes new inflows in order to
benefit from its regularisation policy for parents of children; Poland notes an impact from Germany’s
policy on ‘tolerated persons’. Four countries have no view on the matter; four more (Italy, the Slovak
Rep., Slovenia, Spain) are of the opinion that there is no impact. Three Member States (France,
Greece, Hungary) state that they “assume” that there is an impact on other countries of such policy.
155 This chapter relies solely on the official positions stated by Member States that returned the REGINE
questionnaire. 21 countries returned the questionnaire, although not all stated their policy positions. There
remain, therefore, substantial gaps concerning MS views.
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