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MWG Paper 5 May 2010 1 Georgia Mavrodi European University Institute SPS Department [email protected] Top-down, bottom-up, and from the sides: the Europeanisation of Greek policies of immigration and its limits Migration Working Group, EUI, 5 May 2010 © Georgia Mavrodi 2010. Please do not cite or quote 1 Table of contents I. Introduction………………………………………………………………...….2 II. Greek immigration policy developments, 1990 – 2005……………….5 III. The “Europeanization” of Greek immigration policy across domestic institutions…………………………………………………………………..…9 i. Domestic policy legacies ……....................9 ii. The Executive ………………………………11 iii. The Parliament……………………………..19 iv. The Courts………………………………… 23 IV. Concluding remarks: what can we learn from the Europeanisation of the Greek immigration policy? …......................................……………….....28 References....………………………………………………………………...…30 Annex……………………………………………………………………..…....35 2 Introduction The recent debates concerning the declining role of the sovereign state in defining and formulating immigration policy has been significantly enhanced by the developing European integration process and its implications for migration and immigration policy in the member-states, in the accession states, and in the periphery of the enlarged EU. In the public, media, and academic discourses, immigration legislation and policy practices in the EU member states since 1990 have been often attributed to the impact of “Europe”, namely to the effects that the process of European integration may induce on national policies. These claims concern policy developments in countries both within and outside the EU, and they are often connected to the debate on “Fortress Europe”, that is, on the restrictions imposed by EU member states on new entries of non-EU citizens into the common market. Sometimes, the countries of southern Europe that became hosts to immigration in the late 1980s are additionally charged with the implicit or explicit assumption that their recent transformation into a net receiver of migration movements makes them more receptive to the influence and impact of European institutions of immigration control and immigrant integration (Geddes 2003: 361). Due to their alleged lack of previous immigration policy infrastructure they are depicted as a more or less “virgin ground”, on which EU policy objectives, principles and means are transplanted to the national level of policy-making through mechanisms of obligation, international or supranational learning, or socialisation. I would like to question the validity of such assumptions. First of all, “new” immigration countries need make sense as an analytical category in immigration policy research. Moreover, the plethora of works comparing the policy developments in big European countries that constituted the major immigrant recipients after the Second World War (France, Germany and the United Kingdom) is accompanied by the lack of research dealing with smaller countries or with those that have recently become immigrant hosts. In this sense, the distinction between “new” and “older” immigration countries has left its mark in the methodology of comparative immigration policy research in the European context. I have chosen to address these concerns by paying attention to Greek immigration policy and its development in the last two decades. The case of Greece appears promising in at least three respects: it has been most often categorised as a “new” country of immigration; the vast majority of its immigrant population are non-EU nationals; and the country has been firmly embedded in the process of European integration for the last three decades. If the claims concerning the impact of EU policies on “new” immigration countries are correct, Greece is a most likely case for observing the effects of EU integration on national immigration policies. Moreover, contrary to the prevailing arguments concerning the “Fortress Europe”, a series of recent amendments of Greek legislation on the rights of legally resident non-EU citizens display clear indications of liberalisation. National policy change in this field has resulted in more security of residence and protection of immigrants’ rights, including those that facilitate further legal immigration such as the right to family reunification. This “paradox” informs the formulation of three main questions: how is the liberalisation of Greek immigration policy change to be explained? What impact, if any, did the ongoing cooperation on immigration policy at the EU level have on Greek immigration policy developments and why? What form did this impact take, under what conditions, and what mechanisms did it ‘use’? In searching for answers, the lens of analysis is directed toward the Greek immigration policy change from 1990 to 2005 across domestic institutions and policy areas. Domestic policy change and its direction is therefore the dependent variable in this research project. The rules and regulations on the entry and residence of third country nationals for employment purposes and family reunification offers the core policy area under study because employment and family reunification have been the reasons for the vast majority of non-EU citizens’ migration to Greece. I begin by tracing the chronological development of the policy-making process within the Greek legislature, the executive and the judiciary across time. Thus, my analysis combines a single in-depth case study with the comparative method. A basic finding of this study is that Greek immigration policy since 1990 has relied on institutional and policy continuities of previous decades much more than one might imagine when thinking of “new” immigration countries. The latter are not a “tabula rasa” in immigration issues and their previous rules, regulations, and domestic institutional legacies concerning the entry and residence of aliens should be taken into consideration in order to understand their present immigration policies. A series of Greek restrictive regulations and practices concerning immigration controls during the 1990s had been already adopted in the 1970s and 1980s, long before “Fortress Europe” was established and developed. At the same time, however, Greece lacked the regulation of immigrant integration including the mentality of protecting immigrants’ rights. Until 2005, this provided for a significant point of “mismatch” between the Greek immigration regulations and the developing set of (binding) common EU norms. This has been responsible for significant EU pressures for national policy change. The second major finding concerns the role and impact of the common EU immigration policy. Although the latter’s on-going institutionalisation has affected the timing and the direction of domestic policy change, the extent of this effect has been mediated by domestic institutions and policy legacies and it has been differential. In turn, the degree and mode of adaptation of domestic policy to the European norms has been conditioned by varying degrees of entrenchment of domestic institutions. Finally, EU membership alone cannot account for all European effects on Greek immigration policy. “Europeanization” has also included mechanisms of horizontal information transfers from other EU member-states as well as some effects of the norms of the Council of Europe. However, EU membership has been by far the most powerful institutional framework for inducing or facilitating the liberalisation of Greek immigration policy on legally resident third country nationals in the last two decades. These findings support a reconsideration of the nature, policy dynamics and limitations of “Fortress Europe”, and they invite further scholarly research on the immigration policies of other EU member states. II. Greek immigration policy developments, 1990 – 2005 Between 1990 and 2005, three immigration laws passed the Greek Parliament, each of which, while building on previous legislation, brought changes to the Greek legal order dealing with entry, residence and rights of aliens. Despite great emphasis on immigration controls and on fighting clandestine immigration, more and more rights have been granted to legally resident aliens that resulted in greater security and continuity of residence. This, I argue, reveals a mid-term development in Greek immigration policy towards a dual model of policy which seeks to control new entries while also providing for more chances for immigrant integration. The initial policy response to immigration was the Aliens Act in 1991, which adopted the principle of “zero-immigration” and verified the full competence of the Greek Police in issues of entry, residence and removal of aliens. This approach dominated Greek legislation up to the late 1990s and it emphasised external border controls, restricting immigration of third country nationals of non-Greek ethnic origin, safeguarding internal security, and fighting illegal immigration. Opportunities for legally immigrating and residing in Greece were very much restricted, as were the chances for becoming eligible for naturalisation or being granted permanent resident status and the right to family reunification. Similar to the provisions of the old 1929 Law on aliens, the 1991 Immigration Act prohibited in principle any employment activity of third country nationals, unless they were provided with annual work permits1. After five years, a foreign worker should leave the country or apply for special renewable biannual residence and work permits. Only after fifteen years of continuous legal residence and
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