EU nationals do not need to show national ID cards or passports when travelling from one border-free Schengen EU country to another. However, Ireland is not a member of the Schengen borderless area. 

Non-EU nationals need a valid passport and possibly a visa, depending on the country they want to travel to. If the visa is from a Schengen area country, it automatically allows for travel to the other Schengen countries as well.

Asylum seekers arriving in the EU must first register an application for refugee status before they can apply to work in their chosen country. 

According to the European Commission, member states will grant asylum seekers “with well-founded claims” the right to work “no later than six months after their application is registered”.

For example, asylum seekers can apply for the right to work in Sweden immediately, providing they have a certificate stating that they are exempted from the requirement to have a work permit.

In Italy, asylum seekers have the right to work two months after submitting their application. In Belgium, this period is four months, while Spain and France are among the countries that grant the right to work after six months.

Ireland granted asylum seekers the right to work in 2018. According to the Department of Justice, international protection applicants can apply for work five months after they have applied for international protection, and if they have not received a first-instance recommendation within six months. 

Despite being allowed to work, a report published by Doras in 2021 found that many asylum seekers still face barriers while trying to access employment here. 

It found that employment choices are “disproportionately restricted” for asylum seekers, and that many administrative barriers still prevent them from accessing the labour market, such as having no legal right to a driving licence and issues with opening a bank account.

Non-EU citizens who wish to live in Europe can apply for a residence permit, or single permit. This will allow them to stay in a respective EU country for at least three months.

Migrants usually enter the country on a number of temporary permits before applying for residency. As of January 2022, 5.3% of the EU’s 446.7 million inhabitants were non-EU citizens.

Almost 3.7 million first residence permits were issued in the EU to citizens of non-member countries in 2022, a 26% increase from the previous year.

Applications for those wishing to obtain residency permits are compiled into four categories: family reasons, educational reasons, work reasons and other reasons. Refugees come under the latter category.

Of the first residence permits issued in 2022, 42% were for employment reasons, followed by family reasons at 24%.

Other reasons for seeking a permit accounted for 21% of successful applications, while educational reasons stood at 13%.

Another measure to allow people born outside of the EU to reside in the bloc is the EU Blue Card scheme.

The card gives highly qualified workers from outside the EU the right to live and work in an EU country under certain conditions.

The European Parliament and the Council approved a revised Blue Card Directive in 2021 which makes the requirements for the card easier to meet so that more international talent can relocate to Europe.

To qualify for a card, applicants have to prove that they have “higher professional qualifications”, such as a university degree, as well as an employment contract or a job offer in an EU country for at least one year.

Applicants must also work as a paid employee, as the card does not apply to self-employed work or entrepreneurs, and have an annual gross salary of at least one and a half times the average national salary - except when the lower salary threshold applies.

Every EU country has a different salary threshold. Last year, the minimum salary in Germany was €58,400. In France, €53,836 was the minimum salary required, while it was significantly lower in Italy at €24,789.

Cards are valid for between one and four years, depending on the issuing country. Holders of the card can visit other EU countries for up to three months during a six-month period.

If someone has stayed legally in an EU country for a certain period uninterrupted, they can apply to become a citizen of that state through naturalisation. 

The minimum period of residency varies from three to ten years depending on the country.

According to the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, people with refugee status can apply for naturalisation in Ireland after three years’ residency in the state from the date they arrived in the country.

Some countries ask applicants to undertake a citizenship test to show they have a certain level of knowledge of the country where they live, such as its political system, history, culture and values as well as underlying rights and obligations. 

Applicants also have to meet certain language requirements in the majority of EU member states, though this is not the case in Ireland. 

In 2021, 827,300 foreign citizens acquired the citizenship of an EU Member State, including migrants who were non-EU citizens, migrants who were citizens of other member states, and stateless and unknown citizenship categories.

Citizens of non-EU member states accounted for 85% of the total number of people granted citizenship in 2021.

Spain granted 144,000 people citizenship, the highest recorded in the bloc. France granted 130,400 people citizenship, while 130,000 foreign citizens acquired the citizenship of Germany and 121,500 the citizenship of Italy.

Approximately 9,783 people were granted Irish citizenship in 2021.

Last year, the 27 EU member states reached a political agreement on a unified migration and asylum plan for the bloc.

The New Pact on Migration and Asylum was finally agreed upon between the European Parliament and the Council in December 2023, after three years of negotiations.

MEPs voted on 10 April 2024 to adopt the Pact, although a protest in the parliament chamber delayed the vote for a short time. 

Commenting on the result, Justice Minister Helen McEntee said the approval by the EP of the Pact was “a historic step, which provides a robust legislative framework to address migration and asylum across the EU'.

She said:

It is a shared European solution to a shared European challenge. When implemented, it will ensure European asylum systems are cohesive, fair, and efficient. The Pact’s enhanced screening and security measures will reduce irregular secondary movements of asylum seekers.

This will be particularly impactful for Ireland, while the solidarity and responsibility provisions will assist member states most acutely affected by irregular migration.

The pact contains a range of proposals that revolve around reforming Europe’s asylum and migration policy. These include:

• Introducing a uniform screening process for the identification of non-EU nationals upon their arrival in a member state.
• Developing a common database to detect “unauthorised movements”. 
• Making asylum, return and border procedures more effective. 
• Establishing a ‘asylum migration management regulation’ that will see some member states have the option to pay a monetary contribution, rather than accepting migrants. 
• To prepare the EU for a situation of migration “crisis”, including the “instrumentalisation” of migrants - which means to organise. 

The pact also protects the right to apply for asylum, the EU has said. But a number of charities have criticised the pact in an open letter, saying it would create a “cruel system” that is unworkable.

Under the scheme, a ‘Voluntary Solidarity Mechanism’ was established in 2022 to support so-called frontline member states, such as those bordering the Mediterranean, who see a greater concentration of migration than other EU countries.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), approximately 144,098 refugees and migrants arrived in Italy by sea in the first 10 months of 2023, compared to 85,282 in the same period the previous year.

Under the new solidarity mechanism, there will be a minimum of 30,000 relocations of asylum seekers from those border countries, while member states will pay €20,000 per asylum seeker they do not accept. 

Leo Varadkar, when Taoiseach, said that it is “likely” the Government will opt to pay the financial contribution instead of accepting more migrants.

Despite this, the number of asylum applications continues to grow. According to the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA), the EU received more than one million applications for asylum between January and November 2023. 

These figures are reminiscent of the 2015 refugee crisis, it said, when Europe saw a record 1.3 million people apply for asylum.