Europeanization, Internationalization of Family Reunion Policies: An Unusual Situation in Luxembourg

Abstract

Since the 1950s, nation-states have faced the interventions and interference of supranational organizations in their national policies. While up to 1950, migration policies were entirely in the hands of national authorities, migration has since become less and less controlled by nation-states only: with the treaties of Paris (1951) and Rome (1957), free intra-European movement has been stipulated. There is no longer any doubt about the influence of international and particularly European law on national law. Family reunion is a policy area that is subject to such “Europeanization”. But for family reunion, as for other policy areas, the universal, more liberal, supranational principles happen to be in opposition to the protective mission of nation-states (Bommes and Halfmann, Migration in nationalen Wohlfahrtsstaaten, 1998).