I was wondering if there are any territories that belong to EU countries that also belong the the EU? For example, are there any Caribbean islands that allow EU citizens to take up residency the same way that countries in Europe do? Aruba is one island that comes to mind. Arubans are considered Dutch citizens, but are they EU citizens as well? Wikipedia says they hold “Dutch passports”, but what does that mean, exactly? People who are citizens of EU countries usually have EU passports with country of origin notated on it, not country-specific passports.
The overseas départements of France, such as French Guiana and Gaudeloupe, are integral parts of France and therefore of the EU.
This is not true. European passports are issued by the member states, not any EU agency, and they are issued by national authorities according to the rules of the relevant national law. The passports say “European Union” on them, plus the name of the country, but they are still national passports, even though most countries in the world now treat all EU passports alike (not all of them do, incidentally - the US, for instance, accords less favourable immigration treatment to holders of certain Eastern European passports such as Romanian ones than they accord to Western European countries such as Germany).
EU law simply says that anybody who is a national of a member state is a Union citizen. Union citizenship supplements, but does not replace, national citizenship, and citizens of EU countries still hold national passports that simply say “European Union” in addition to the country on them.
As to the question: Several EU countries have overseas dependencies to which EU law applies. The French overseas departments and territories are one example. Some Dutch colonies are another. In the case of Britain, the situation is more complicated, since some territories that are strictly speaking not part of the UK but for all practical purposes are treated as if they were one, like the Isle of Man for instance, are not part of the EU whereas others aren’t.
Greenland is another interesting case. It belongs to Denmark but has autonomy, and EU law does not apply to it. It used to apply to it before Greenland got its autonomy, making Greenland the only territory that ever quit the EU (great trivia question, btw).
The Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla (all Spain) are not part of the EU, but Spaniards living or from there are still EU citizens. I’m not sure whether they can vote in elections to the European Parliament; they do not pay VAT (because we got that as an EU thing) but get a similar-value tax by a different name instead. A lot of Spanish laws are derived from or must be in consonance with EU law (see below), and apply in those three locations just as they do in the rest of the country, so you can’t really say that they’re not under EU law - directly no, indirectly yes.
“Below”: the way EU laws and regulations work is, regs that are created at the EU level must then be adapted/adopted at the appropriate levels below. If there was, for example (there is not, there are multilateral treaties but it’s not an EU-law) an EU law about Medicare/Social Security (let’s call it “EU-SS”), in Spain it would have to be reflected by a modification to the Ley General de la Seguridad Social (LGSS), but also and since many SS functions are managed at the regional level by up to 17 separate Regional Regulations plus 2 local ones (one per autonomous region, one per autonomous city - the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla wouldn’t have to do it in order to comply with EU-SS, but in order to comply with LGSS).
Nitpick from an EU lawyer: I know you’re using the term “regulation” here is a more general sense, not the technical meaning it has in EU law, but what you say is not true for “Regulations” in the proper meaning the word has in EU law. There are two fundamental types of legal instruments which the EU uses to legislate (in addition to the founding treaties): Directives and Regulations. Regulations have direct effect, meaning they have the force of law anywhere in the EU and supersede national law. Directives normally don’t have direct effect; all they do is create an obligation for the member states to pass a law that says what the Directive says, but once that has happened (“implementation” of a Directive), the national authorities apply the national law, not the Directive. I say “normally” because the European Court of Justice has developed a complicated doctrine of criteria under which a non-implemented Directive can nonetheless have direct effect.
Sorry, I was trying to come up with a general term and couldn’t, still haven’t. My regional government likes coming up with the local version of anything at an upper level, too (and on the few occasions we didn’t already have something for it, they like to be stricter Just Because We Can), but that’s a matter of them enjoying it and not a requirement - I just can’t ever remember which ones are the ones that do have to be brought down and which ones are not; I’ll try to remember it for next time. I think what confuses me is that in non-EU-law Spanish, a Reg is lower than a Law and a Directive would be a piece of advice, it’s a sort of “false enemies”.
Trivia: these are also shown on the euro banknotes (at the bottom, to the right of the amount).
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Hmm, never noticed that.
Wikipedia says that the Canaries etc. are in fact part of the EU, by the way.
It’s the same in German. We call Regulations (in the European sense of the word) a Verordnung in German, but within non-EU German law a Verordnung is an instrument adopted by an executive body on the basis of an authorisation in a proper law. Therefore, a Verordnung in that sense ranks below a German law and is void if in violation of it, but an EU Verordnung outranks a German law since European instruments take precedence over national ones. It’s confusing. The failed European Constitution aimed at replacing the term Regulation with “European Law” and the term Directive with “Framework Law”, but that sounded too centralist to be incorporated into the Lisbon Treaty, so we’re still stuck with the original terms, which date back to the founding treaties from the 1950s.
Incidentally, it would be possible to implement a European Directive with a German Verordnung - the EU does not really care how member states implement Directives, as long as they do it.
The broader term, at least in use among EU lawyers, for Directives and Regulations (and a few other instruments) is “secondary law”. The term “secondary” indicates that the instrument has been adopted by an EU organ on the basis of an authorisation in “primary law”, i.e. the treaties that set up the EU. Correspondingly, an act adopted on the basis of an authorisatio in secondary law would be “tertiary law”; that term, however, is not commonly used, whereas “secondary law” is.
I think this is a misunderstanding. The Canary Islands are part of the Union, but are outside the customs area. I have several times heard Finns making a similar (but incorrect) statement about Aland, which is similarly outside the customs area but nonetheless within the EU.
The Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey, on the other hand, are not part of the EU.
Somebody mentioned that Greenland was the only territory to have quit the Union (the EEC, at that time). What about Algeria?
Since in 2009 legal immigrants from Germany were 8612, comparing to from Romania, 4557, having to be set against there being 1,130,818 total legal immigrants in that year, I would suggest the difference is fairly academic.
Reading web stuff on immigration hilariously suggests that Americans are under the impression their country still welcomes Europe’s huddled, tired and poor…
Mind you, I shouldn’t suggest that any country on earth, not even the Russian Federation, can indefinitely import over a million people a year without something having to give.
PDF Link from US Office of Immigration Statistics ( DHS, who knew ? ) Page 10.
**Link **didn’t appear…
Well, while you’re at it, you can include the Google Docs link for people who don’t have or like PDF viewers:
This might be true but ignores several things. It’s difficult for Romanians to even get travel visas to visit the US. For Germans it’s essentially a formality. Also the immigration numbers ignore how many people applied for immigration versus how many were allowed to immigrate. I’m just guessing, but there’s a lot more financial motivation to come from Romania to the US than there would be to come from Germany, which has a reasonably comfortable standard of living.
I’m pretty sure the reference is not to permanent immigration per se, but in regard to the visa waiver program, which is also regulated under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Most of the new EU members from Eastern Europe are not eligible for the VWP. As mentioned above, even getting a tourist visa to the US is not an easy feat for many people.
That’s indeed what I was referring to. It’s not just a matter of immigration in the sense of foreigners who want to live permanently in the U.S.; even going there as a tourist is much more painful for certain EU citizens than for others from the American side of things.
As to the question whether Algeria was ever part of the EU/EEC: I don’t have a cite at hand, but I’m pretty sure it has never been. There never was a principle saying that any territory somewhat affiliated with a member state was part of the Union or Community; instead, the approach always was that the Treaties would list the overseas territories to which European law would apply. See Article 131 of the original Treaty of Rome which, in 1957, established the European Economic Community - the central piece of what later evolved into the EU. Unfortunately, the Annex IV referred to in that provision, with the exhaustive list of associated overseas territories, is not included in that file, but I’m pretty sure Algeria was not part of it. I’m prepared to be proven otherwise, however.
Clearly it is not the case that any territory affiliated with a member state is part of the Union. However Algeria was not merely affiliated with France; it was part of France, just as Guadeloupe is today.
My understanding is that there exists a special status in EU law, the name of which I can not remember, and that Algeria is the only territory which has ever had this status.
Along with this, my favorite bit of geo-trivia:
“Is there a land border between the French Republic and the Kingdom of the Netherlands? If so, where?”
Yes, on the island of St. Ma(a)rtin.
While we’re at it, my favorite is : with which country France has the longest border?
The correct answer is Brazil, due to the size of French Guyana.
Such a special status would have to have been defined in Community law, and it doesn’t seem as if it has. I was unable to find a full text, including annexes, of the original 1957 Treaty of Rome in English, but I found it in French. Article 131 of that Treaty lays down the rules applying to these territories, and Annex IV (PDF) lists the territories which this provision has in mind. There is no mentioning of Algeria, but there is of a lot of other overseas dependencies of EEC countries at the time.
Of course it’s possible that people at the time considered Algeria to be an integral part of France, and therefore didn’t include it in that provision. This I do not know. But I would expect a special status of Algeria to be mentioned in the Treaty, and I couldn’t find it. I admit, however, that it would be preferable to have a full-text version, including annexes, of the Treaty of Rome as it was signed in 1957 (without the later amendments, which is what you usually find in online versions of the Treaty), to run a search for Algeria on it.