This volume offers an evaluation of the Schengen Information System and border control co-operation from a transparency and proportionality perspective. It also incorporates a legal descriptive analysis of the co-operation in order to accommodate the changes and developments that occurred during the writing period. The transparency and proportionality perspectives are developed from human rights and data protection criteria. Transparency is understood as knowledge and accessibility to legal information as well as openness and accountability. On the other hand, proportionality is a requirement for guidance, balance and justification as well as a need to avoid excessiveness and arbitrariness in border control work. The final findings reveal that the Schengen co-operation suffers from a deficiency of transparency and proportionality. Consequently, measures are proposed to augment the deficiency. Even as this study was reaching its conclusion, fundamental legislative changes, closely similar to some of the arguments and recommendations projected in this study, took place. The efficacy of these changes is yet to be discerned.

This book analyses the expulsion of delinquent foreigners and their exclusion from the territory through a comparative lens. The book begins with a vertical perspective, focusing on the effects of European standards on the law of expulsion and entry bans in Germany and the Netherlands, and the law regulating deportation from the United Kingdom. It explores how these countries use their margin of discretion, granted by European law, to solve the societal, political and legal challenges that are posed by delinquent foreigners. Moreover, it highlights the similarities, convergences and differences between these countries' approaches to the topic. Subsequently, the book adopts a horizontal perspective by focusing on the effects of national decisions on other states, thereby addressing transnational administrative acts. National expulsion decisions and entry bans can be given effect throughout European countries, with the consequence that other states are in principle obliged to enforce them by refusing foreigners access to their territory. This obligation arises despite the fact that expulsion decisions and entry bans are adopted on the basis of diverging national provisions. Even though the margin of discretion of national decision makers has already been limited, the remaining differences call for further recommendations, which are put forward in this book.

This book provides a stocktake and comparative socio-legal analysis of law enforcement cooperation strategies in four different regions of the world: the European Union (EU), North America, Greater China and Australasia. The work analyses law enforcement cooperation mechanisms within the socio-legal framework of global normmaking. The strategies addressed range from legal frameworks facilitating cooperation to formal and informal police networks and cooperation practices. The study also takes into account crime-specific engagement, for example campaigns focusing on drug crimes, terrorism, financial crime, kidnappings and other offences. It explores challenges in policing practice and human rights protection in each region that could be countered by existing strategies in another. As regions usually develop more advanced cooperation mechanisms than exist at a global scale, strategies found in the former could help find solutions for the latter. To map existing strategies and assess their impact on both human rights and policing practice this study relies on an assessment of the primary and secondary literature sources in each region as well as interviews with practitioners ranging from senior police officers to prosecutors, government officials, customs and military staff. This book presents a valuable resource for academics and postgraduate students, as well as policing and criminal justice practitioners, government officials and policy makers.

Immigration and Privacy in the Law of the European Union: The Case of Information Systems examines the privacy challenges posed by the establishment and operation of pan-European centralised databases processing personal data of different categories of third-country nationals.

This research questions the seemingly ossified premise that states have an absolute discretion to control international migration. Applying Max Weber’s theories of legitimacy, it determines that while states have certain traditionally legitimate functions, migration control, as distinct from the determination of citizenship, is not one such function. Measures of migration control must thus be justified on a rational-legal basis, that is, on a minimal evidential basis. Acknowledging the many obstacles states face in carrying out this legitimising exercise, it is suggested that a supranational approach at the regional level is the most sustainable long-term model, with an ultimate aim of achieving inter-regional cooperation on migration management on the basis of equality between regions.

This book assesses data protection rules that are applicable to the processing of personal data in a law enforcement context. It offers the first extensive analysis of the LED and Regulation (EU) 2018/1725. It illustrates the challenges arising from the unclear delineation between the different data protection instruments at both national and EU level. Taking a practical approach, it exemplifies situations where the application of data protection instruments could give rise to a lowering of data protection standards where the data protection rules applicable in the law enforcement context are interpreted broadly. The scope of data protection instruments applied by law enforcement authorities impacts processing for purposes of border control, migration management and asylum because there is an unclear delineation between the different data protection instruments.

The book undertakes a thorough human rights assessment of the EU Returns Directive. The overarching human rights framework, which circumscribes states prerogatives in the context of expulsion, builds upon obligations derived from the principle of non-refoulement; the right to life, respect for family and private life, effective remedy, basic social rights; the prohibition of torture and ill-treatment; and protection against arbitrary detention and collective expulsion. Based on this assessment, Majcher explores several protection gaps in the EU return policy which may result in violations of migrants’ rights and highlights how the provisions of the Directive should be implemented in line with member states’ human rights obligations. Informed by this assessment, the book discusses amendments to the Directive, proposed by the European Commission in September 2018. “By examining the European Union (EU) Returns Directive in the light of international and European human rights law, Izabella Majcher thoroughly explores and analyses the requirements the EU member states’ authorities must guarantee migrants in an irregular situation when they adopt and implement return decisions, entry bans, pre-removal detention, and removal.” Marie-Laure Basilien-Gainche, Professor of public international law, University Jean Moulin Lyon 3, Honorary member of the Institut universitaire de France