Research Papers

The Lisbon Treaty has been hailed for enhancing the ‘communitarization’ of policy-making in the area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ). Besides extending the ordinary legislative procedure to all AFSJ matters, it has also abolished the restrictions previously placed on the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)’s jurisdiction in this area. This last development can be expected to have highly significant consequences for future evolutions in the area of migration policy-making. Firstly, as literature on the role of the CJEU in other policy areas has convincingly documented, the Court’s jurisprudence in the past has forcefully pushed European integration forward. Secondly, in an area with such important normative dimensions as migration policies, the role of the CJEU as an institution with a ‘rights-based’ policy agenda gains an extra layer of significance. Thirdly, the Court is renowned for its capacity to alter the ‘rules of the game’ by empowering supranational actors such as the European Commission and non-state actors who can directly challenge member states through litigation. By reviewing a number of recent CJEU landmark cases in the area of family migration policies, and member state responses to the rulings, this paper analyzes how ‘judicialization’ impacts on both the substance of European migration policies, as well as the institutional dynamics of policy-making in this area.