ABSTRACT
The EU immigration acquis so far is practically divided into three major sectors: Admission, Fight against illegal migration and Return and readmission. In the present contribution it is only possible to focus on some parts of the first sector of the acquis, regarding admission of TCNs, which constitutes also the emerging substantive European Union (EU) immigration law. It is a much more positive piece of secondary legislation, part of the EU immigration acquis, since it seems to have seriously heeded to and incorporated European and international human rights law standards. In conclusion, it could not but be conceded that, overall, the substantive EU immigration acquis, as it stands today, constitutes a significant development of Member States' efforts aimed at respecting and protecting human rights of TCNs in Europe. As mentioned above, there exist a number of serious divergences between some of the current substantive EU immigration legislation and international and European human rights law.
