INTRODUCTION

The relationship between integration policies and EU migration law has taken unprecedented forms in the last decade of European integration. During the negotiations over the first pieces of EU secondary legislation covering the conditions of entry and residence of third-country nationals (TCNs) in the EU in the early 2000s, a new approach to integration made its way into Directives 2003/109 on the status of third-country nationals who are long-term residents and 2003/86 on the right to family reunification. This approach makes use of integration policies as criteria for access to EU rights and freedoms by TCNs. Integration functions as a legal requirement or migration control tool over socio-economic inclusion, security of residence, and family reunification. The academic literature has qualified this mutation as a ‘paradigm shift ‘ from past normative approaches to integration developed since the 1970s in EU law and policy. Indeed, integration policies used to mainly focus on the facilitation of mobility through non-discrimination, respect for family life and security of residence. Lately, however, integration has become a new ground for exclusion of foreigners in the EU's management of human mobility and identity.

Two novel formulations of this control-oriented approach to integration can now be found in Directives 2003/109 and 2003/86, i.e. ‘integration conditions’ and ‘integration measures’. Integration conditions are used in Article 5 Directive 2003/109 for the acquisition of long-term resident status, while integration measures are present in Article 15(3) Directive 2003/109 (which specifies the conditions for residence in a second Member State), and Article 7(2) Directive 2003/86 (stipulating the requirements for the exercise of the right to family reunification). The scholarly debate has engaged with the meaning and differences between the scope of integration ‘conditions’ and ‘measures’ in the Directives and EU immigration law more generally. It has also paid attention to the legality of EU Member States’ integration policies implementing them into their respective legal systems through the use of mandatory integration programmes, tests/exams and contracts. A key controversy in scholarly and policy debates has been the extent to which EU Member States could lawfully apply obligatory civic integration programmes conditioning access and/ maintenance of EU rights by TCNs to passing an exam on knowledge of the receiving country's language and ‘societal values’.