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5 Eur. J. Migration & L. 343 (2003)
Community Readmission Agreements with Third Countries - Objectives, Substance and Current State of Negotiations

handle is hein.journals/ejml5 and id is 353 raw text is: European Journal of Migration and Law 5: 343-357, 2003. 343 © 2003 Koninklijke Brill NV Printed in the Netherlands. Community Readmission Agreements with Third Countries - Objectives, Substance and Current State of Negotiations MARTIN SCHIEFFER* 1. Introduction Under the Maastricht Treaty, issues relating to the return of persons illegally residing in the European Union fell solely in the competence of the Member States. This legal situation changed on 1 May 1999 with the entry into force of the Amsterdam Treaty, which conferred explicit powers in this field to the European Community. Art. 63(3)(b) EC now enables the Council to adopt measures within the area of illegal immigration and illegal residence, including repatriation of illegal residents. The Community's new powers under this article include the external competence to conclude readmission agreements with relevant third countries in order to accelerate and facilitate the return of such persons. The reason for this transfer of powers was that conviction had gained momentum that individual Member States were no longer able to react appropriately to the increasing difficulties encountered by their competent authorities in the field of return. These difficulties are linked, among others, to the fact that return measures always require the co-operation of another State, i.e., either the transit country or the country of origin. This is the reason why illegally residing persons often succeed in delaying or, in individual cases, even completely thwarting their return because in the case of absence, loss or destruction of personal travel or identity documents, substitute papers then have to be obtained from the competent embassies or consulates through lenghty identification procedures, with the issue of such papers frequently only being possible upon examination by further authorities in the country of origin. Some third-countries even refuse to co-operate for political reasons or - openly or covertly - make readmission contingent upon, e.g., visa facil- itation or financial considerations. Since a continuous presence of illegally residing persons also produces severe financial and social burden on Member * The author is working in the Asylum and Immigration Unit of the European Commis- sion's Directorate-General Justice and Home Affairs. All views expressed in this article are purely personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission.

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