Constitutional and Legal Status of Migrant Workers in the EAEU: Implementation of Freedom of Movement and Freedom of Labor

Introduction: The relevance of this study is driven by the objective need for theoretical understanding and practical improvement of mechanisms for implementing fundamental economic freedoms—freedom of movement and freedom of labor—in the context of deepening interstate integration and the formation of a single labor market. In modern legal doctrine, the issue of harmonizing the supranational standards of the EAEU with the national constitutional guarantees of the member states is of critical importance. The dynamic transformation of migration processes challenges constitutional law to find an optimal balance between protecting national interests, ensuring state security, and complying with international obligations to create a comfortable environment for the labor activity of citizens of the Union countries. Methodology and materials: The objective is to provide a comprehensive constitutional and legal understanding of the legal status of migrant workers within the EAEU, identify the regulatory content and implementation specifics of freedom of movement and freedom of labor as key elements of the single labor market, and determine the constitutional and legal limits, guarantees, and mechanisms for aligning the Union’s integration regulations with the national legal systems of member states. The methodological basis is based on recognized general and specific scientific methods of inquiry used in legal scholarship. Empirical data is represented by statistical information from the EEC and other publicly available sources. The results of the study were obtained on the basis of a comparative legal analysis of the provisions of Art. 97 and 98 of the Treaty on the EAEU and the practice of their application. It is shown that the main challenges in the field of constitutional and legal regulation of the status of migrant workers are related to the incomplete consistency of the national legal regimes of the Member States, differences in administrative procedures for admission to work and social security, the persistence of practical barriers to the implementation of freedom of movement, recognition of documents on education and qualifications, access to medical and other social guarantees. Conclusions: Taking into account the difficulty of achieving a balance between the integration goals of the EAEU and the sovereign powers of states, changes to the institutional instruments of the Union are proposed to ensure the implementation of contractual conditions.

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