From Brakeman to Booster: Policy change in Germany's EU Labour Migration Policy
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12368 |
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
| Author | Holger Kolb |
From Brakeman to Booster: Policy change in
Germany’s EU Labour Migration Policy
Holger Kolb*
ABSTRACT
More than 8 years ago the Council Directive 2009/50/EC of 25 May 2009, which is also (and
much better) known as Blue Card-directive, came into effect. Although in general the passing
of the directive can be regarded as a milestone in the history of EU migration policy, the first
proposals of the directive brought forward by the European Commission envisaged a much
deeper and more binding framework including less room for maneuver for the member states.
It is well known that particularly the German government at that time spoke out against a
(more) extensive Europeanisation of labour migration policy. In sharp contrast to this rather
reluctant stance towards ‚more Europe‘in this area recent developments indicate a significant
policy change in the German way of dealing with the question of how much Europe is neces-
sary in labour migration policy. This article seeks to retrace this rather sudden shift and to put
it into a broader context of migration policy change in Germany.
INTRODUCTION
The main aim of this article is to introduce and discuss a specific dimension of policy change in
the field of labour migration policy: the attitude of the German government towards efforts of
Europeanisation of this specific subfield of migration policy. Existing literature on policy change in
the field of labour migration policy specifically highlighted as features of policy change the intro-
duction of human capital–based attraction schemes, the set–up of immigration offers for skilled
workers (without academic degrees) as well as the creation of easier access to permanent residence
for labour migrants (see for example Laubenthal, 2014; Kolb, 2014; Finotelli and Kolb, 2015).
1
The discussion of the rapidly changing position of the German government towards attempts at
EU-harmonisation of labour migration policies thus is thought to add a new feature to the history
of a policy change in this particular subfield. These changes also deserve specific attention from a
policy perspective since they ‘have put Germany’, a country which was notoriously criticised for
being overly reluctant to recruit foreign workers, ‘among the OECD countries with the fewest
restrictions on labour migration for highly skilled occupations’(OECD, 2013: 15).
2
After an introduction in Section 1, Section 2 starts with analysing the conventional stance on this
particular topic and shows the reluctance of the respective German negotiators to accept secondary
legislation which would result in significant shifts of competences from the national to the suprana-
tional level. In sharp contrast to a period of distinct EU-scepticism in this policy field in the past
(outlined in Section 2), Section 3 examines the most recent period of Germany’s European labour
migration policy (so far) and analyses the legal and political transposition of the directive 2009/50/
EC, widely known as Blue Card directive. The finding that –significantly deviating from the tradi-
tional pattern of EU-scepticism –the German government decided to establish and foster the Blue
*Expert Council of German Foundations on Integration and Migration. The views in this article are my own and
should not be regarded as those representing the views of the Expert Council.
doi: 10.1111/imig.12368
©2017 The Author
International Migration ©2017 IOM
International Migration Vol. 55 (S1) 2017
ISSN 0020-7985Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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