Annual Report on Migration and Asylum 2017

Abstract

number of developments took place in 2017 in the legal migration field. In terms of legislation, inter-institutional negotiations for the revision of the EU Blue Card Directivestarted in September 2017, leading to agreement on a number of technical points. Member States began with the transposition of the recast Students and Researchers Di-rective and completed their transpositions of the Seasonal Workers Directive and the Intra-Corporate Transfers Direc-tive. The evaluation of the current EU framework on legal migration (REFIT Legal Migration Fitness Check) continued and will be completed in 2018. The European Commission also started developing pilot projects to enhance cooper-ation with third countries of origin on the comprehensive management of migration flows, particularly in relation to the prevention of irregular migration and readmission. These pilot projects also aim to offer further safe and legal pathways for economic migration to both address short-ages in EU labour markets and to provide opportunities for migrant to acquire new skills.