European Integration and Immigration by Third-Country Nationals: The Obduracy of the National Border

Abstract

This paper seeks to deepen the understanding of European integration in the specific policy area of immigration. In the first place, by addressing the relationship between immigration, territorial borders, and conceptions of sovereign power, it will shed much needed light on what the very sovereign power that individual Member States allegedly wish to preserve is about.

In the second place, this paper describes the implications of Member States’ inability to think beyond the national sovereign paradigm on the legal regime regulating immigration of third-country nationals within and into Europe. We will see that Member States’ desire to preserve the traditional function of the national territorial border within Europe – despite their formal commitment to establishing an area without internal frontiers – has led to ambiguity in the separation of powers between the EU and its Member States.

Keywords: EU law, migration law, territory