| Abstract [eng] |
In the last decades international migration has become one of the most salient issues on the European Union (EU) policy agenda. Increasing numbers of immigrants have challenged the capabilities of the Member states to implement effective national immigration policies. Therefore in 1999 the Member states began to develop a common EU immigration policy. However, after almost ten years a progress achieved in this field remains very limited. Especially difficult is to reach an agreement on a common policy in the field of the legal immigration. This paper by employing an institutional approach seeks to find out the most important factors restraining the shaping of common EU legal immigration policy. Veto players theory created by George Tsebelis is used as the theoretical background of the research. This theory explains how different institutional settings influence policy stability. According to the theory the most important feature of political institutions is veto players, i.e. decision makers whose agreement is required for the change of policy. The main argument of the veto players theory is that the higher number of veto players and the greater distances among their preferences lead to a higher level of policy stability. Following this theoretical framework the paper tests two hypotheses. After the first one the limited common EU immigration policy is a result of the high number of veto players in the immigration field. After the second one the limited common EU immigration policy is a result of the considerable discrepancy between veto players’ preferences in the immigration field. The paper is organized in the following way. In the first part the process of shaping common EU immigration policy is described. The second part presents veto players theory: its conception, main ideas and arguments. The third part applies theoretical concepts of veto players theory to the analysis of common EU immigration policy. First of all the methodology of the application of the veto players theory is presented in detail. The results of spatial analysis of common EU immigration policy are given and interpreted in the last section of the paper. They let to evaluate how the number of veto players, the distances between their preferences and the agenda setters influence a common EU immigration policy. The analysis has revealed that the number of veto players is not significant factor of the limitations of the common EU immigration policy. Its impact depends on the preferences of veto players. Because of the relative similarity the preferences of veto players are also not an obstacle to develop a truly common EU immigration policy. The main conclusion of the paper is that the most important factor of limited common EU immigration policy is the discrepancy between the preferences of the European Commission and the Member states. The Commission as the institutional agenda setter presents proposals which are very liberal and therefore unacceptable to the Member states. The only one way to adopt common supranational rules in the field of legal immigration is then to modify the proposal of the Commission significantly. Thus the Commission limits the shaping of the common EU immigration policy. The results of the research indicate that considering the preferences of the Commission and the Member States the possibility to adopt common rules on regulating the entry of immigrants into the EU is much greater than to create a common policy of the immigrants’ integration. In order to boost the development of common EU immigration policy the Commission should to cease advocating liberalisation of immigrants’ integration. Instead of that the Commission as well as the Member States should try to reach an agreement on the common rules of the admission of third-country nationals. That is the most direct way to create a truly common EU immigration policy at the present conditions. |
