The links between migration and development, including the specific role of migrants’ remittances, have been extensively studied in the last few years. The priority given to this issue is easily understandable. On the one hand, international migration flows have been on the rise during recent decades, facing an increasing number of obstacles, including a generally restrictive stance of host countries’ immigration policies, but overcoming them all, even at the price of immigrants’ rights. On the other hand, international differences on economic development levels are still among the main explanatory factors of migration. Migration flows often result from a lack of development perspectives in the sending countries, reinforcing the economic potential of host ones. However, a number of retroactive effects emerge: the growth of migration is often accompanied by abundant economic transfers back home, including remittances, investments and benefits from international trade, besides information and human capital. In sum, from the point of view of sending countries, migration and development may reinforce each other, being this crucial for the increase of well-being and the decrease of migration potential. In this paper, the specific role of remittances in the migration-development nexus will be examined. It will be argued that migrants’ remittances exert mixed impacts (positive, negative and neutral) over the economic development of sending countries, and that institutions play a crucial role in maximizing the positive and minimizing the negative ones. The main geographical area taken into consideration is Europe, one of the most important world regions in the volume of international migration, and particularly Central and Eastern Europe, a crossroad for many inward and outward flows, and also a fast-growing beneficiary of immigrants’ remittances. In the first section, some trends of current international migration in Europe will be highlighted, including flows involving Central and Eastern Europe, as well as some causal factors and prospects for continuing migration in the future. In the second section, remittances will be observed as one of the main consequences of international migration, and an evaluation of its volume in Central and Eastern European (and Central Asian) economies will be done. In the third section, impacts of remittances over development will be stressed, revealing its mixed effects (positive, negative and neutral). Finally, the specific role of economic, social and political institutions will be discussed, arguing that they exert a vital role in determining which outcomes will predominate.