This study provides an overview of legal and policy developments related to the implementation of the Family Reunification Directive since 2017. It examines the current state of national legislation, policies, and practices following two decades of the Directive’s application, incorporating relevant case law and highlighting both challenges and best practices. It also presents data on the scale and evolution of family reunification between 2017 and 2023 (and 2024 where available), drawing on both Eurostat and national sources.

Integration through acquisition of citizenship has become an important topic in many EU Member States in recent years, as the number of new migrants arriving in the EU has increased in recent years. The EMN study found that citizenship is seen by Member States as either the culmination of the integration process or as facilitating the integration process. However, in most Member States, third-country nationals are not actively encouraged to apply for citizenship. 

Today, the Belgian Contact Point of the European Migration Network published a new national report on Family Reunification of Third Country Nationals in Belgium. The report served as the Belgian contribution to an EU Synthesis report on the subject, which compares national policies and practices on the subject in 25 EU Member States and Norway.

Based on the main findings of national contributions from 24 EMN NCP, the report highlights similarities and differences in means of prevention, detection and action, as well as statistics related to marriages of convenience and false declarations of parenthood.

In this national contribution to the EMN focussed study, the Belgian Contact Point clarifies the scope of the issue and presents national means of prevention, detection and actions against such misuses, as well as statistics in this field.

The King Baudouin Foundation has organized between April 2010 to March 2011 different meetings gathering actors implicated by their personal or their professional background in the field of family reunification policies