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Inventory of the agreements linked to readmission (updated January 2010)
The formal and informal dimension of the agreements linked to readmission
The inventory of all the standard bilateral readmission agreements, concluded by each of the 27 EU Member States, would not suffice to provide an overall picture of the various mechanisms and cooperative instruments that have emerged, over the last decade, to sustain the removal or expulsion of illegally staying third-country nationals.
These mechanisms may be formalised, as is often the case, through the conclusion of standard readmission agreements if both contracting parties view this as being valuable to each other’s interests.
Under some circumstances, however, both contracting parties may agree to cooperate on readmission issues without necessarily formalising their cooperation in a standard readmission agreement. They may opt for alternative ways of dealing with the issue of readmission by placing it in a broader framework of cooperation including additional forms of mutual assistance (e.g., police cooperation agreements, arrangements and pacts) or by choosing to confirm their cooperation via other types of deal. These can include exchanges of letters and memoranda of understanding.
The main rationale for the adoption of alternative agreements is to secure bilateral cooperation on migration management, including readmission, and to respond flexibly to new situations. Various EU Member States have been known to show some flexibility in readjusting their patterns of cooperation with some third countries, in order to address the pressing problem of re-documentation and the delivery of travel documents or laissez-passers required from the consular authorities to remove undocumented migrants.
Click on the map to view how each EU-27 Member State has structured, in an ad hoc manner, its cooperation on readmission, at a bilateral level.
The gradual density of the bilateral patterns of cooperation on readmission involving European countries
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| Late 1970s | Late 1980s | Late 1990s | August 2009 |
The above graphs reflect the growing importance that bilateral cooperation on readmission or enforced return has gained in the external relations of each European country, over the last decades. They refer to agreements that have been concluded. Agreements still under negotiation in 2009 are not reported on the graphs.
For each time period, the size of the circles (or nodes) has been weighted with regard to the total number of bilateral agreements linked to readmission (whether standard or not). In other words, the bigger the circle the denser the web of agreements linked to readmission in which each European country is involved.
As early as the 1970s, former West Germany and The Netherlands were the European countries the most involved, at a bilateral level, in the field of the cooperation on readmission. This situation changed drastically during the 1980s and even more during the 1990s, as a result of the tightening of immigration policies in Europe and following the adoption of policies designed to fight against illegal migration. This priority contributed to the gradual extension of the web of bilateral readmission mechanisms towards the Eastern and Southern neighbourhoods of the EU. Additionally, the planned enlargement of the EU and the obligation for the ten new acceding countries to align themselves with the Schengen acquis also increased the number of bilateral agreements on readmission.
From the 1990s to date, the issue of readmission has been increasingly weaving its way through various policy areas prioritised by the EU Member States and by the European Commission (see Community readmission agreements and mobility partnerships). In August 2009, the web of bilateral agreements linked to readmission has grown extensively and numerically involving around 116 countries located in all continents.
Today, as far as the EU-27 are concerned, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Spain are the Member States most involved in bilateral readmission cooperation. Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Switzerland and Ukraine are the third countries which cooperate most at a bilateral level with the EU Member States.
