With a national law because it's under the principal of supremacy of European law.
The regulation is supposed to take precedence over any conflicting
provisions or national law.
So recasting the residence directive into a residence regulation.
Would in my mind enable citizens to make more effective
use of the rights of free movements in the EU.
So that's one way of changing, making a change to
the residence directive to enhance its effectiveness.
Another way of course would be to look at the enforcements,
the commission is asked as guardian of the treaty with
the monitoring of the application of European law.
And one of the things the commission does,
is to look at how the resonance directive has been implemented by the member states.
But unfortunately, the commission has very limited resources
at it's disposal to engage in these monitoring efforts.
So if we consider that there are 28 member states and
roughly 14 million people make use of their free movements rights.
And when we know that there are only 12 policy officials in
Director General for Justice Unit D3, which is responsible for
monitoring the application of the Residence Directive.
We can ask the question, legitimate question, where the 12 policy
officials is a significantly sufficient resource to be able to effectively
monitor the application of the resident's directive in 28 member states.
So I think that's one way of enhancing, also the weight of the directive
operates, is to ensure that the commissions resources
are adequate to be able to engage in effective monitoring and
enforcement of the residence rules.
>> Do we need to change the organization of the policymaking process,
at European level,
in order to address some of the weaknesses you explained about residence directive?
>> I think that there are a number of things that could be done.
Particularly in terms of the expert group.
Which the commission has established.
The commission established an expert group that brings together member states and
the commission as observers.
We're into a forum that provides the ability for the member states
to discuss problems that have arisen with the implementation of the directive.
Now the problem Is that this decision making,
this expert group, is not open to outside observers.
And there are some delays in the ability
to get the decisions which are made by the expert group published.
So at the moment the last decision that has been published by the expert
group dates back from 2012 and
we don't know what has been decided in the last few years.
So there's an issue that first issue of transparency of the decision making.
The second aspect is that there's no civil society
participation in this expert group.
And therefore there's no mechanism for
civil society to participate in decisions made by this expert group at the moment.
The only way that civil society can participate in decision making
relating to the residence directive is by formulating complaints to
the European commission about infringements of the directive.
Or sending petitions to the European Parliament.
Aside from those two mechanisms, there is no way that a civil society is able to
participate before problems have arisen in how decisions and
policies are made within the group.
So it would be good for the commission to think about a mechanism to allow for
participation by civil society in how this expert group operate.
Or create another forum which brings together member states and
civil society and the commission and other EU actors.
And then the final problem with this
expert group is that sometimes the member states identify priorities which
are not necessarily backed up by evidence and statistics.
And we know that under the directive there is no obligation on the member states to
create statistics into how the residence rules are applied in practice.
And so one way to provide for further, for
strengthening evidence based policy making would be to either
incorporate an obligation on the members states in the directive.
Or change the regulation that exists on the collection of
immigration statistics to require member states to collect detailed statistics on
how they apply the residence directive in practice.
>> My of this policy address some of those problems you are mentioning.
>> I don't think personally that further decentralization would somehow enhance or
improve the way that the residences directive applies.
In fact we've seen that a lot of the problems are caused in countries that have
a decentralized approach, because there's inconsistency in how decisions are made.
So I think that Incorporating further decentralized
decision making into how the residence directive would
create new problems rather than solve existing problems in
how the residence directive is implemented in practice.
>> Currently there's a digression about rewriting the directive.
Should the current policy be changed, and in what ways?
>> It definitely be changed because it's not working.