Central and Eastern European Migration Review

This contribution examines the legal powers that Dutch authorities have to restrict the right to free movement of mobile but ‘unwanted’ EU citizens, including measures that seek to expel and ban EU citizens from re-entering the Netherlands. The article defines ‘unwanted’ EU citizens as mobile EU citizens in respect of whom national authorities seek to take measures to restrict their right of residence, either on the grounds of their being an unreasonable burden on the Dutch social assistance system or in respect of public policy and public security. We analyse the relevant EU legal rules, their interpretation by the Court of Justice of the EU and their national implementation and application in order to show the legal constraints faced by national authorities when seeking to restrict EU mobility. This legal study is supplemented by a discussion of existing data on the number of EU citizens expelled or removed from the Netherlands. Our analysis suggests that, due to the legal protection enjoyed by mobile EU citizens against measures restricting their residence rights, the Dutch authorities encourage voluntary departure as a pragmatic solution to the presence of ‘unwanted’ EU citizens.

In early 2021, over 5 million European Union (EU) citizens had applied for settled status to secure their right to continue to live, work and study in the United Kingdom (UK) after the country’s withdrawal from the EU (Brexit). In 2018, the Home Office launched a Statement of Intent to implement an application process for EU citizens through its EU Settlement Scheme. In the period leading up to Brexit, the UK government assured EU migrants that their existing rights under EU law would remain essentially unchanged and that applying for settled status would be smooth, transparent and simple. However, the application process has resulted in some long-term residents failing to obtain settled status, despite providing the required information. Based on qualitative in-depth interviews with 20 EU migrants living in two major metropolitan areas in Northern England, this article discusses the significant barriers which EU citizens face in the application process. This situation particularly affects the most vulnerable EU migrants with limited English-language skills and/or low literacy levels as well as those who are digitally excluded. The study contributes to the growing body of research on the consequences of Brexit for vulnerable EU migrants in the UK, focusing specifically on Central and Eastern European migrants.

Pre-Brexit media discourse in the UK focused extensively on the end of free movement, the governance of European mobility, and its relationship with state sovereignty. This article, methodologically anchored in Critical Discourse Analysis, discusses how the potential post-Brexit deportee, namely the ‘Vile Eastern European’, is depicted by the leading pro-Leave British press. The Vile Eastern European is juxtaposed with a minority of hard-working and tax-paying migrants from the continent, as well as with unjustly deported Windrush and Commonwealth migrants. As the newspapers explain, the UK has not been able to deport the Vile Eastern European because of the EU free movement rights. The press links the UK’s inability to remove the unwanted citizens of EU countries with its lack of sovereignty, suggesting that only new immigration regulations will permit this deportation and make the UK sovereign again. The article concludes that the media discourse reproduces and co-produces the UK ideology of deportability that has been the basis for the EU Settlement Scheme and new immigration regulations.

Poland is the leading country in pursuing its own citizens under the European Arrest Warrant (EAW), with the number of EAWs issued between 2005 and 2013 representing one third of the warrants issued by all EU countries (although some serious inconsistencies between Polish and Eurostat statistical data can be observed). The data show that Poland overuses this instrument by issuing EAWs in minor cases, sometimes even for petty crimes. However, even though this phenomenon is so widespread, it has attracted very little academic interest thus far. This paper fills that gap. The authors scrutinise the topic against its legal, theoretical and statistical backdrop. Based on their findings, a theoretical perspective is drawn up to consider what the term ‘justice’ actually means and which activities of the criminal justice system could be called ‘just’ and which go beyond this term. The main question to answer is: Should every crime be pursued (even a petty one) and every person face punishment – even after years have passed and a successful and law-abiding life has been building in another country? Or should some restrictions be introduced to the law to prevent the abuse of justice?