Migration and Fundamental Rights Bulletin - 1/2026
Although the Family Reunification Directive has been in force for over 20 years, numerous legal, practical, and administrative hurdles make reuniting family members of individuals granted international protection in Europe still a challenging and time-consuming process, according to the European Parliamentary Research Service’s briefing of April 2025 on Family reunification rights: Refugees and beneficiaries of subsidiary protection. In 2025, several Member States introduced or proposed restrictive legal measures, some of which prompted constitutional and EU‑level judicial scrutiny. Persistent practical and administrative obstacles, including stringent income and housing requirements, complex documentation demands and lengthy procedures, continue to make timely and effective access to family reunification challenging.
Examples of restrictions discussed or introduced in 2025 include the following. Austria suspended family reunification applications not only for beneficiaries of subsidiary protection but also for refugees, justifying it under Article 72 of the TFEU, which preserves Member States’ responsibilities for maintaining law and order and safeguarding internal security. This development, depending on its application, may raise tensions with EU law. Ireland and Sweden proposed and Belgium and Finland introduced severe restrictions affecting both refugees and beneficiaries of subsidiary protection. The Netherlands proposed and Germany introduced a suspension of applications for family reunification for beneficiaries of subsidiary protection, with Germany applying extremely restrictive criteria for hardship cases. A study by the German Institute for Human Rights of February 2026 finds these criteria are applied so restrictively that only very few cases qualify, raising the risk of violating the ECHR.
In some Member States, restrictions affected rights guaranteed by the constitution, triggering the involvement of constitutional courts. Belgium’s Constitutional Court suspended the new provisions and referred preliminary questions to the CJEU to determine compatibility with EU law. In Portugal, the Constitutional Court found restrictions to family reunification, such as a two-year waiting period, unconstitutional.
Such legal developments are complemented by practical obstacles. An October 2025 European Migration Network report on family reunification lists various challenges to apply for family reunification which emerged from the research. Depending on the Member State, these include high housing costs, strict income thresholds, and burdensome documentation requirements. Integration requirements, particularly language proficiency, pose barriers, especially for applicants with vulnerabilities. In addition, processing times may be long and there may be difficulties in accessing consular services, and high costs, particularly for refugees from conflict zones.
A press statement by the German NGO Pro Asyl (May 2025) illustrates the practical barriers. It refers to short application deadlines (e.g. three months), lengthy procedures, unrealistic civil status documentation requirements for applicants from conflict areas, expanded use of DNA testing and additional verification procedures, which often make family reunification challenging or impossible.
