5. Migration policy: crises, partnerships and people
Niels Keijzer
in: Hackenesch, C., Keijzer, N., & Koch, S. (Eds., 2024). The European Union’s global role in a changing world: Challenges and opportunities for the new leadership (IDOS Discussion Paper 11/2024). IDOS.
State of play
Migration has been a key issue for the European Union (EU)’s external action, and its development policy more specifically, for at least three decades. While the basis of the EU’s external migration policy is its 2005 Global Approach to Migration and Mobility (GAMM), after 2015 a perceived migration and asylum crisis shifted the external dimension to the centre of the Union’s migration policy, strengthening its scope and profile – including through a host of bilateral cooperation frameworks. In recent years, the EU has concluded various agreements with third countries on return and readmission, both binding and non-binding, while some member states have also concluded their own bilateral agreements to this end (Niemann & Zaun, 2023).
In July 2019, von der Leyen’s leadership pitch to the European Parliament stressed the need for its external migration policy actions to include diplomacy, economic development, stability and security. With regard to development cooperation, she emphasised the need for development cooperation to prioritise “improving the perspectives of young women and men in their countries of origin” (von der Leyen, 2019, p. 16). The Commission considered it a major achievement that agreement with the Council and Parliament had been reached on the Pact on Migration and Asylum, with member states now facing considerable legislative and logistical preparations ahead of the Pact’s entering into application in June 2026 (von der Leyen, 2024).
The latter priority followed up on initiatives introduced under the Juncker Commission (2014-2019), including the EU’s external investment plan as well as the European Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF) that was co-funded by the EU and its member states and mobilised EUR 5 billion to fund programmes focused on border management and addressing the so-called “root causes” of migration from Africa to Europe. The EUTF was considered an important policy signal and promoted the more direct involvement of EU member state actors (notably implementing agencies) in EU cooperation programmes. Due to the wide range and number of objectives and associated actions, the effectiveness of the EUTF as a whole was considered hard, if not impossible, to assess (European Court of Auditors, 2018).
Migration also claimed a key place in the mandate of the Commissioner for International Partnerships, who in 2019 was instructed to “be ready to adapt bilateral funding to achieve our objectives on migration management” (von der Leyen, 2019, p. 5). Though no such clear cases were seen of actual migration-motivated official development assistance (ODA) cuts, there was a clear push to increase migration-related cooperation actions – also at the expense of other priorities. The EU’s EUR 79.5 billion financing instrument, the so-called Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument – Global Europe (NDICI/GE) that covers the 2021-2027 budget period, included a requirement that 10% of this budget should be migration-related. On the 1st of February 2024, EU member states agreed to redeploy in order to increase the EU’s external action budget by EUR 7.6 billion, of which EUR 3.1 billion would be fresh money and EUR 4.5 billion would be redeployed funds, already present in the budget. A recent external evaluation of the implementation of EU funding under this instrument so far observes that, due to the changing priorities, the Commission’s Directorate General for Migration and Home Affairs is increasingly involved in the preparation of overarching country cooperation strategies (MacKellar et al., 2024).
Migration-related funds are increasingly provided in the context of so-called migration partnership agreements with countries geographically proximate to the EU’s external borders. The Commission President has referred to the high-level missions for launching these agreements as “Team Europe” (von der Leyen, 2024), which – particularly in the case of Tunisia – has led to criticism by some member states and the European Parliament. To date, the following partnership agreements have been agreed and are in various stages of operationalisation, while, in addition, the Commission made exploratory missions to Lebanon and Egypt during the first half of 2024 (MacKellar et al., 2024) (see Table 1).
Table 1: EU migration partnership agreements
| Concluded in | Member states involved in the launch | |
| EU-Tunisia strategic and global partnership | June 2023 | Italy, the Netherlands |
| Migration partnership between the EU and Mauritania | March 2024 | Spain |
| Strategic and Comprehensive Partnership between The Arab Republic of Egypt and the European Union | April 2024 | Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Greece, Italy |
Source: Author, based on EU public statements
Internal and external influences
Due to a combination of strong political pressure to act, and the various crises facing the EU, migration policy has had a strong pull on the EU’s budgetary resources. This was shown by the recent revisions to the EU 2021-2027 budget that were concluded in February 2024, and which increased funding for migration-related development cooperation through a combination of fresh funding and reallocations of planned funds. A recent external evaluation of the NDICI/GE instrument observed that the mobilisation of the instruments “cushion” of funds to deal with unforeseen challenges for already ongoing crisis – notably funding of Syrian refugees and host communities as well as Rohingya refugees – contradicted the idea of this funding reserve (MacKellar et al., 2024, p. 32). In view of this resource pull, interviewees for the evaluation expressed concern that migration-related needs could go at the expense of EU funding and the priority for human rights, democracy and civil society (MacKellar et al., 2024, p. 46), funds which as per the EU’s analytically flawed “root causes” would be assumed to address root causes of migration in the first place.
Although the EU has framed the budgetary and legislative migration policy decisions of 2024 as considerable achievements, in the eyes of its partners the EU’s migration policy stance is one of several factors that is negatively affecting relationships and prospects for pursuing mutual benefits through international cooperation. This is particularly the case for the EU’s partnership with Africa, which was strongly prioritised by the EU’s leadership in the period 2019-2024 but where considerable setbacks have been incurred. One of the many reasons for this, as argued by Foresti and McNair (2024), is that the EU’s partnership with Africa can thrive through facilitating the exchange of people and ideas – whereas the EU’s migration policy priorities has meant deterring, rather than promoting, the movement of people. While frustrating the exchange of ideas and networking between Europe and Africa in the short term, in the medium to long term this will also influence African citizens’ disposition towards Europe and may lead them to more strongly engage with other world regions. Thus migration policy, as currently pursued by the EU leadership, will likely for the foreseeable future remain incoherent with Europe’s ambition to strengthen and deepen its partnership with Africa.
The negotiation of the migration partnership agreements was a risky endeavour for the EU: the Union, and especially particular EU member states under domestic electoral pressure to “do something”, were compelled to initiate discussions with selected neighbouring and geographically proximate states. Although these days a year is a lifetime in European politics, the discussions of the agreement with Tunisia in the summer of 2023 are still reasonably fresh. Many European stakeholders were concerned over the deal struck with Tunisia’s controversial president, including the mass “dumping” of refugees in the Sahara, as well as the concluding of the deal by von der Leyen, the Italian president, and the acting Dutch prime minister that was subsequently announced as “Team Europe”. The relatively informal and non-transparent approach to concluding these recent partnership agreement draws inspiration from the 2016 EU-Turkey deal, which – due to its intergovernmental status – left no room for, nor opportunity of involvement of, the European Parliament or the European Court of Justice (Niemann & Zaun, 2023).
The Tunisia deal was critically received by the European Parliament as well as by selected EU member states, including governing parties in Germany. The plan subsequently descended into chaos as the Tunisian president rejected financial support in October 2023 after the government had blocked the visit of a European Parliament delegation a month earlier. However, the partnership agreement remains in place and appears to be in the process of being implemented. This example also shows that the EU’s neighbouring states are well aware of the political sensitivity of migration for the EU as well as of the electoral demand for the EU to (be seen to) act. This seriously hinders the EU’s initial plans, as instructed to the International Partnerships Commissioner, to use migration (and readmission specifically) as a lever. No migration-related ODA cuts were introduced during the von der Leyen I Commission.
Looking ahead
The above shows that the EU faces a challenging trade-off between responding to the migration-related consequences of crises in its neighbourhood, and its ability to engage with these regions to prevent and provide long-term solutions to the causes of irregular migration and refugees. This reflects a similar dynamic as in the EU’s national politics, with governing parties in many member states misrepresenting migration and integration as representing a “crisis” (in part caused by their own inaction/action) to seek electoral support. The situation for the EU’s external action is one where the resource pull of migration-related cooperation is so strong that other key priorities – and potentially possibilities for the EU to exercise influence and soft power – are compromised.
The next EU leadership should consider the following actions and policy options:
- First of all, it should be acknowledged that tough language on “punishing” partner countries for a lack of cooperation on return and readmission of migrants and refugees is unrealistic and not coherent with the EU’s approach to broker “mutual benefit” types of arrangement with those countries. Hence, the next Commission should no longer explicitly instruct the next EU Commissioner in charge of international partnerships to consider adapting bilateral funding in relation to migration management.
- Secondly, the EU should critically review its migration-related actions that seek to “reduce” human mobility towards the EU, both as regards the effectiveness of these actions and for any unintended effects. The considerable spending of funds should be a basis for critically evaluating the value for money of such programmes for EU taxpayers, despite their assumed demand for such programmes.
- Third, the low political ownership of and apparent non-standardised preparation of migration partnership agreements is a cause for concern from a European public governance perspective. The EU should define principles and objectives for migration partnership agreements and share information about these agreements in a transparent manner.
- Fourth, the EU needs to strongly invest in and allow for the considerably increased short- and long-term movement of people from Africa to Europe for trade, investment and research (among other purposes) as a key means to strengthening the EU-Africa partnership, which remains a key geopolitical objective of the EU’s leadership.
- Last, but not least, the European Parliament needs to be involved in the preparation of the migration partnership agreements. Not involving the European Parliament is a cause for concern, given the democratic legitimacy that such partnership agreements require. While understandable for the flexibility it brings in terms of making “deals” (see Table 1), the approach is not consistent with the EU’s established approaches to international cooperation and thus negatively affects how the EU is perceived by its partners.
References
European Court of Auditors. (2018). European Union Emergency Trust Fund for Africa: Flexible but lacking focus. https://www.eca.europa.eu/lists/ecadocuments/sr18_32/sr_eutf_africa_en.pdf
Foresti, M., & McNair, D. (2024). Connection and Creativity: Rethinking the movement of people in and between Africa and Europe. In D. McNair (Ed.), Why Europe needs Africa (pp. 27-35). Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. https://carnegie-production-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/static/files/McNair%20-%20Why%20Europe%20Needs%20Africa%20-%202024.pdf
MacKellar, L., Massey, C., Smaïl, T., Bellot Le Hellidu, S., Bossuyt, J., Hauck, V., Jones, A., & Lieckefett, M. (2024). Instruments evaluation: European Union’s external financing instruments (2014-2020 and 2021-2027). European Commission.
https://international-partnerships.ec.europa.eu/document/download/fa67d6be-550b-450a-b3c3-f9d5959f55af_en?filename=evaluation-eu-external-financing-instruments-2014-2020-and-2021-2027-main-report-provisional_en.pdf
Niemann, A. & Zaun, N. (2023). Introduction: EU external migration policy and EU migration governance. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 49(12), 2965-2985. doi: 10.1080/1369183X.2023.2193710
von der Leyen, U. (2019). A Union that strives for more: My agenda for Europe. https://commission.europa.eu/system/files/2020-04/political-guidelines-next-commission_en_0.pdf
von der Leyen, U. (2024, 25 June). Letter to the members of the European Council (no subject). https://open.overheid.nl/documenten/1000f8e8-9732-4e30-ac8c-f983a7a86be4/fil
