Justice and home affairs

Developments in the justice and home affairs (JHA) domain in 2011 were much marked by the – mostly temporary – refugee and migrational movements resulting from the ‘Arab Spring’. They led to serious tensions within the Schengen group, exposing the vulnerability of the Schengen open internal border system to asymmetric pressures in the absence of effective solidarity mechanisms. The reinforced role of the external border management agency Frontex could address this solidarity deficit only partially. The migratory pressures on the EU's southern borders, the EU's signing of a major Convention of the Hague Conference on Private International Law and new priorities defined for common action in the fight against organized crime highlighted the growing importance of the external dimension of EU policy-making in the JHA domain. The total annual output of the JHA Council increased slightly from 121 adopted texts the year before to 136 texts,1 which included several substantive pieces of legislation, especially in the field of criminal justice co-operation, but also on asylum and immigration matters, where several other instruments remained under (difficult) negotiations.