A/HRC/23/46 B. Overview of migration in the European Union 13. Migration has always been a fundamental part of European history: migrants are undoubtedly a key element of the cultural, economic and social fabric of the European Union, and contribute to European society in countless ways. Yet, in recent decades, migration within Europe has become an increasingly sensitive topic, often leading to polarized and heated public debates and becoming a decisive election issue in national elections. Moreover, although migration policies were traditionally the domain of individual member States, the European Union has, over the past two decades, engaged in a process of coordination of the rules of admission and on border management, including common rules on residence of third-country nationals. With 42,673km of external sea borders and 7,721km of land borders, the Schengen free-movement area, comprising 26 countries (including four non-European Union States) with over 700 million crossings at the external borders in 2011 alone, is a unique experiment in regional border management.1 14. The European Union first moved towards cooperation and coordination in areas strictly linked to security, focusing first on the prevention of cross-border crime. Gradually, this expanded to harmonization of some rules both in the area of border management and returns, and the area of asylum and regular migration continues to be developed. However, it should be noted that key determinants of migration policy, including the ever important factor of numbers of admissions, including of both regular migrants and refugees for resettlement, remain within the decision-making power of individual European Union member States (EUMSs). 15. On the one hand, the Special Rapporteur welcomes this progressive harmonization of European Union policy, as migration is certainly a sphere that can benefit from coordinated regional governance. However, he observes that the development of European Union-wide standards regarding management of migration at the regional level has not been matched by a parallel coordinated guarantee of the rights of migrants. While there have been advances related to rights of regular migrants, including the directives on long term residence and on the single permit, and related to the rights of persons in need of international protection, harmonization in terms of the rights of migrants in an irregular situation has been insufficient. Rather, the Special Rapporteur observes that a corollary of the harmonization of migration law and policy at the European Union level appears to be the rise of increasingly complex and restrictive rules around conditions of entry, and far stricter border management policies. 16. The stricter approach to border control has also been accompanied by more stringent entry requirements to the Schengen Area. Prior to Schengen, relatively flexible entry requirements or specific guest worker programmes enabled unskilled migrants to travel to European Union Member States, to seek out opportunities and then adjust their administrative status accordingly. Presently, however, the possibilities for such opportunities remain quite limited as the Schengen system requires most non -European Union unskilled migrants, particularly from countries of the Global South, to obtain a visa in order to enter the European Union to look for work.2 This has created a reality whereby migrants from non-European Union countries, and in particular those from developing countries without visa facilitation programmes with the European Union, are increasingly unable to regularly enter the European Union to look for work in person. 1 2 See also, European Commission, 3rd Annual Report on Immigration and Asylum (2011), Brussels, 30.5.2012, COM (2012) 250 final. T he European Union requires citizens of all Maghreb countries, for example, and most countries in Africa to be in possession of a visa. See generally: http://eurlex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CONSLEG:2001R0539:20110111:EN:PDF 5