EU: "The sixteenth state"
01 March 1995
The French presidency has put forward a proposal for a joint action under K.3 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) to improve the position of long-resident settlers in TEU territory who are not EU or EFTA citizens. Observers estimate that the number of so-called "third-country nationals" long settled in the host countries of the EU would form a substantial sixteenth state of around 16 million or so people. Up to now this population, largely from Europe's former colonies and its eastern and southern peripheries, has been ignored in the preparations for a single European space. Free movement rights are confined to three months visa-free travel under the draft External Frontiers Convention, not yet signed or in force. But it is this population which bears the brunt of policing measures such as identity checks and fishing raids for illegally employed workers.
The draft joint action proposes that member States should recognise 10-year residence permits as conferring settled status. Such permits should be issued after 3 years' lawful residence. Long-term residence permits should be renewed unless the holder is away from the member State concerned for over three years. People with settled status should enjoy equal treatment with nationals in employment and social assistance and should normally not be deported except after a sentence of imprisonment or on national security grounds. However, living in a state of polygamy could, according to the French draft, justify withdrawal of a long-term residence permit. After being settled in one member State for five years, the draft allows for relative freedom of establishment in other member States.
The draft appears to recognise the importance of granting security of residence to Europe's long-settled immigrant populations. But it says nothing about harmonisation of citizenship, or facilitating the grant of citizenship to second-generation "immigrants" born in the EU. In 1993 France, the proposer of the joint action, removed the automatic right of children of immigrants born in France to become citizens, replacing it with an "opting in" procedure dependent on good character and the renunciation of another citizenship at 18. The Council of Europe seems to be the only body at European level which has recently recognised the importance of citizenship rights. Introducing a Second Protocol amending the 1963 Convention on the Reduction of Cases of Multiple Nationality, issued in 1994, the Council says that the 1963 Convention is based on the principle that dual or multiple nationality is inherently undesirable and should be avoided. But the Second Protocol recognises that this is no longer the case. It is vitally important that second-generation "immigrants" in particular have access to the nationality of the state in which they are born and brought up, and that spouses and children of mixed marriages do not have to lose their own nationality by taking on that of the other partner or parent. The Second Protocol would make it easier for people in these categories to retain dual or multiple nationality.
Proposal for a joint action on the status of third-country nationals residing legally in the Union for a long period, Note from the incoming French Presidency to the Migration Working Party (Admission), ref: 12338/94, Restricted ASIM 244, 22.12.94; Second Protocol amending the 1963 Convention on the Reduction of Cases of Multiple Nationality, Council of Europe, 1994.