Love thy neighbour? Coronavirus politics and their impact on EU freedoms and rule of law in the Schengen Area. CEPS Paper in Liberty and Security in Europe No. 2020-04, April 2020

Restrictions on international and intra-EU traffic of persons have been at the heart of the political responses to the coronavirus pandemic. Border controls and suspensions of entry and exist have been presented as key policy priorities to prevent the spread of the virus in the EU. These measures pose however fundamental questions as to the raison d’être of the Union, and the foundations of the Single Market, the Schengen system and European citizenship. They are also profoundly intrusive regarding the fundamental rights of individuals and in many cases derogate domestic and EU rule of law checks and balances over executive decisions. This Paper examines the legality of cross-border mobility restrictions introduced in the name of COVID-19. It provides an in-depth typology and comprehensive assessment of measures including the reintroduction of internal border controls, restrictions of specific international traffic modes and intra-EU and international ‘travel bans’. Many of these have been adopted in combination with declarations of a ‘state of emergency’

Love thy neighbour? Coronavirus politics and their impact on EU freedoms and rule of law in the Schengen Area. CEPS Policy Contribution 03 Apr 2020.

This Paper examines the legality of restrictions on intra-EU and international traffic of persons introduced in the name of COVID-19. It provides a typology of measures including the reintroduction of internal border controls, restrictions of specific international traffic modes and intra-EU and international travel bans. Many of these have been adopted in combination with declarations of a ‘state of emergency’, which affect to different degrees national checks and balances over executive action. These measures pose fundamental questions as to the raison d’être of the European Union, and the foundations of the Single Market, the Schengen system and European citizenship. The analysis shows a complex web of parallel and incoherent national regimes restricting unilaterally the entry/exit of people, and displaying wide divergences in the conditions for people to be allowed to move in the Schengen area for legitimate reasons. And while the Schengen rules envisage the possibility to reintroduce internal border checks, Schengen Ministries of the Interior do not have carte blanche. They need to justify that these policies are based on scientific analysis backing up not only their suitability and necessity, but also that they don’t disproportionately impact on essential fundamental rights and rule of law guarantees, including those that are non-derogable even in times of declared crises. Our assessment shows that this has not been the case. Many of the cross-border mobility restrictions unlawfully interfere with EU freedoms as well as undercutting the checks and balances envisaged in EU and national law. The Paper concludes by recommending the EU adopt an “EU-wide Schengen Stress Test”, which would provide a periodic country-by-country ‘quali-quantitative’ assessment of the state of free movement, Schengen rules and asylum legislation across the Union

When mobility is not a choice Problematising asylum seekers’ secondary movements and their criminalisation in the EU. CEPS Paper in Liberty and Security in Europe No. 2019-11, December 2019

The notion of ‘secondary movements’ is commonly used to describe the mobility of third country nationals for the purpose of seeking international protection in an EU member state other than the one of first irregular entry according to the EU Dublin Regulation. Secondary movements are often identified as a major insecurity factor undermining the sustainability of the Schengen regime and the functioning of the EU Dublin system. Consequently, EU policies have focused on their ‘criminalisation’, as testified by the range of sanctions included in the 2016 CEAS reform package, and on a ‘policing’ approach, which has materialised in the expanded access to data stored in the EURODAC database by police authorities, and its future interconnection with other EU databases under the 2019 EU Interoperability Regulations. This Paper shows that the EU notion of secondary movements is flawed and must be reconsidered in any upcoming reform of the CEAS. The concept overlooks the fact that asylum seekers’ mobility may be non-voluntary and thus cannot be understood as a matter of ‘free choice’ or in terms of ‘preferences’ about the member state of destination. Such an understanding is based on the wrong assumption that asylum seekers’ decisions to move to a different EU country are illegitimate, as all EU member states are assumed to be ‘safe’ for people in need of international protectio

Statistics on Loss of Nationality in the EU. CEPS Liberty and Security in Europe No. 70/December 2014

This paper was prepared as a Policy Brief for discussion at the final conference of the project on Involuntary Loss of European Citizenship: Exchanging Knowledge and Identifying Guidelines for Europe, 11-12 December 2014. Co-funded by the European Commission’s DG for Justice, Citizenship and Fundamental Rights, the ILEC project has aimed to establish a framework for debate on international norms on involuntary loss of nationality. For more information visit: www.ilecproject.eu

Mapping Statistics on Loss of Nationality in the EU: A new online database. CEPS Liberty and Security in Europe No. 76/December 2014

Statistics can be useful when assessing the practical relevance of varying rules and practices on the involuntary loss of nationality across EU member states. Yet while much progress has been made within the EU in recent years with regard to the collection of comparable and reliable information on the acquisition of nationality, statistics on the loss of nationality are hard to find and, where available, difficult to interpret. In this comparative report, the authors explore the landscape of existing statistical data on loss of nationality in the European Union. They identify challenges to the existing methods of data collection and data interpretation and introduce an online statistical database, bringing together all existing statistical data on loss of nationality in the EU. These data are summarised in tables and graphs and discussed with reference to the relevant national and European sources. The authors conclude with recommendations to policy-makers on how to improve data collection in this area

The future of the Schengen Area: latest developments and challenges in the Schengen governance framework since 2016 : study

Dokumenty Evropského dokumentačního střediskaBrussels : European Parliamen

The international diffusion of expatriate dual citizenship

While the global increase of expatriate dual citizenship acceptance over the past decades has been widely observed, the temporal and spatial contexts of this trend have remained understudied. Based on a novel data set of expatriate dual citizenship policies worldwide since 1960, we find that dual citizenship toleration has increased in the last half century from one-third to three-quarter of states globally. We argue that these domestic policy changes should be understood in light of normative pressure in a world where restrictions on individual choice in citizenship status are increasingly contested and where liberalisation is reinforced through interdependence and diaspora politics. We apply Cox proportional hazard models to examine dual citizenship liberalisation and find that states are more likely to move to a tolerant policy if neighbouring states have done so and that they tend to do so in conjunction with extending voting rights to citizens residing abroad and receiving remittances from abroad. Contrary to other studies, we do not observe significant variation by regime type.publishedVersio

D4.2 Reports on (1) The impact of family migration and family reunification of refugees and other migrants; (2) Secondary movements within the European Union

Family migration constitutes the largest migration inflow to OECD countries, accounting for almost half the immigration in recent years. Between 2014 and 2018, family migration increased in most countries, leading to worries about large migration flows in future years following the large numbers of asylum applications in E.U. countries during the mid-2010s. That led some countries to restrict family reunification programs, despite a lack of empirical estimates of the numbers of family migrants that could realistically be expected. This paper provides predictions of how large an increase in the number of immigrants through family reunification and reproduction can be expected. A common stereotype that policymakers and voters have in mind when considering migrants, especially asylum seekers and refugees, is that of a single, typically male, young person. Reality is more complex, with many migrations taking place as a core family. To establish a more representative picture closer to the facts, it is thus important to distinguish to what extent the structure of migrants' families is driven by family reunification and reproduction that only occurs after the arrival in the destination country, respectively. To assess these questions, we combine data from the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees with fertility estimates from the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital and make predictions about family reunification and delayed fertility. We build thereby on the literature on fertility patterns of migrants and assume two different fertility scenarios: fertility under adaptation and fertility under socialization. We estimate that in general, for each asylum seeker and refugee, 0.19 family members can be expected to come to Germany through family reunification. In addition, between 0.20 to 0.47 new family members can be expected due to future fertility, depending on the scenario. We also provide further country and education specific predictions building on regression analysis. Our results imply that family reunification and delayed fertility can increase the asylum seeker and refugee stock in the destination countries, numbers are however lower than often expected

Offshoring Asylum and Migration in Australia, Spain, Tunisia and the US: Lessons learned and feasibility for the EU. CEPS Research Reports, September 2018

This report examines the feasibility of extra-territorial processing of asylum and migration management for the EU. Based on a comparative account of past and current experiences of extra-territorialisation of asylum processing and migration policies in Australia, Spain, Tunisia, and the US, the Report draws 'lessons learned' and identifies key challenges from the perspective of their effectiveness. The findings highlight how external processing of asylum applications is politically, legally and operationally unfeasible and ineffective for the EU. It would pose profound challenges to EU and Member States' rule of law and human rights obligations. Past and current policies outsourcing protection obligations to third countries often amount to extra-legal processes as well as violations of the principle of non-refoulement and of the prohibition of arbitrary detention under inhuman and degrading conditions. The research findings show that extraterritorial actions of the EU and its Member States abroad would fall to varying degrees under EU and domestic judicial, administrative and financial accountabilities which present strong potentials for bringing portable justice to potential victims of human rights violations. In this way, this report contributes to and suggests ways forward in creative legal thinking to close any loopholes inherent to ideas on extraterritorial asylum processing and migration management for the EU

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data