After the Storm: Learning from the EU Response to the Migration Crisis

After the Storm LEARNING FROM THE EU RESPONSE TO THE MIGRATION CRISIS By Elizabeth Collett and Camille Le Coz MIGRATION POLICY INSTITUTE EUROPE After the Storm Learning from the EU response to the migration crisis By Elizabeth Collett and Camille Le Coz June 2018 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors thank Migration Policy Institute Europe (MPI Europe) colleagues Jonathan Slagter for his excellent research assistance, and Lauren Shaw, Joe Boyle, Demetrios G. Papademetriou, and Natalia Banulescu-Bogdan for their invaluable comments and feed- back. They are also grateful to all of the interviewees from the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, Member States, international organisations, and civil-society organisations for their openness and willingness to share their insights. An earlier version of this report was commissioned by the General Secretariat of the Council to inform internal discussions with senior EU and national officials. Opinions and interpretations presented in this publication are solely those of MPI Europe and do not necessarily represent the positions or views of the European Union and its institutions. © 2018 Migration Policy Institute Europe. All Rights Reserved. Cover Design: April Siruno, MPI Layout: Sara Staedicke, MPI No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from Migration Policy Institute Europe. A full-text PDF of this document is available for free download from www.mpieurope.org. Information for reproducing excerpts from this publication can be found at www.migrationpolicy.org/about/copyright-policy. Inquiries can also be directed to [email protected]. Suggested citation: Collett, Elizabeth and Camille Le Coz. 2018. After the Storm: Learning from the EU response to the migration crisis. Brus- sels: Migration Policy Institute Europe. CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ......................................................1 I. INTRODUCTION ..........................................................3 II. HOW DID THE EUROPEAN UNION RESPOND TO THE 2015–16 CRISIS? ..........................................................6 Five phases of ‘crisis’ response ............................................................ 7 III. THE STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF EU CRISIS RESPONSE ................................................................. 22 A. Making sense of crisis (information and early warning) .........................23 B. Coordination .........................................................................28 C. Legitimacy and accountability ......................................................34 D. Resource allocation ...................................................................37 IV. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ..................... 40 A. Ensuring sustainability .............................................................40 B. Readiness ..............................................................................42 C. Institutionalising coordination .....................................................46 D. Closing observations ..................................................................50 APPENDICES ................................................................... 51 Appendix A. Timeline of key crisis-response initiatives, 2014–17 ..................51 Appendix B. Existing EU crisis-response mechanisms .................................53 Appendix C. Recommended EU crisis-response mechanisms ...........................54 WORKS CITED ................................................................ 55 ABOUT THE AUTHORS ..................................................... 62 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY There is no perfect crisis management system. Whether faced with natural disaster, political upheaval, or mass migration, governments must make difficult choices in terms of mobilising and allocating resources, and clearly delineating and assigning responsibilities—all in a high-pressure environment. The irregular and unexpected flow of thousands of migrants and refugees into Europe in 2015 and 2016 presented the European Union with a transnational (and existential) crisis in a policy area that had not been constructed to manage fast-paced change. Deep political dissent and complex divisions of power between EU institutions, as well as between Member States, further hampered the European Union’s ability to respond, exacerbating long-stand- ing tensions that persist several years on. The prevailing hope amongst European governments is that no similar situation will occur again. Significant investments—financial, political, and diplomatic—are being poured into a preventative strategy, largely out- side and at Europe’s external borders. But officials remain concerned that, despite the high salience of migration issues in Brussels over the past several years, the bloc remains no better prepared to face sudden changes than it was in 2014. In view of this concern, the Migration Policy Institute Europe (MPI Europe) was commissioned by the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union in December 2017 to reflect upon the formal and informal crisis-response mechanisms that have evolved in Europe since 2014 to address unexpected migratory flows. The central goal was to help EU policymakers develop (or maintain) promising response structures to ensure greater resilience to future volatility. Crises rarely look the same twice, but this does not mean governments cannot prepare for them. This report builds on that analysis. It draws on MPI Europe interviews with a broad range of senior officials involved in EU and national responses to the 2015–16 crisis, and examines a range of different elements of crisis response: information collection and sharing, coordination, leadership, and resourcing. Crises rarely look the same twice, but this does not mean governments cannot prepare for them. A core challenge in the early stages of the crisis was the absence of sufficient data to draw a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of rapidly evolving migration flows. Instead, EU practitioners relied on scattered sources of information, often conflicting, including media and nongovernmental sources, as well as gut instinct. Over the past several years—and particularly since the triggering of the European Council’s in-house political crisis-response mechanism (the Integrated Political Crisis Response, or IPCR)—this information flow has improved. However, the European Commission can step up reporting further by incorporating more analytical and qualitative elements into its reports (rather than simply presenting data) and by focussing more strongly on trends that might require a concerted policy response—steps that can both improve decision-making and allay fears rooted in confusion. Information, while necessary, is also insufficient. From the outset, it proved difficult to signal and spur a response to changing needs—from shifts in movement through to difficulties accessing financial resources— unless raised at the highest political level. Often, the trouble lay in identifying who was responsible, and responsive, for any given task among a highly diffuse range of venues and actors, from the many directorates- general in the European Commission, to clusters of UN and EU agencies, and multiple Member States. This made coordination extremely challenging, not least because many EU-level actors were unused to working together in a high-pressure environment, while forging delicate working relationships with key national governments. This was particularly the case as the European Commission rolled out ‘hotspots’ to process new arrivals in Greece and Italy, an effort that required close daily cooperation between a number of EU, national, and civil-society actors. After the Storm: Learning from the EU response to the migration crisis 1 Another key challenge throughout much of the crisis was that there was little consensus on how the European Union should respond. Due to the political sensitivity of the issue, much of the ultimate decision-making remained with heads of state. In a series of European Summits, Member State leaders engaged in lengthy and politically bruising discussions as to the direction of their shared response. Thus, absent an overall plan, many of the actions taken by the European Commission in the intervening months took the form of triage—ensuring basic support was in place and offering emergency funding—rather than developing a proactive response. Due to this equivocation and the absence of pre-existing institutional mechanisms, coordination in Brussels was slow to emerge. Following a meeting of EU and West Balkan leaders called by European Commission President Juncker in late Autumn 2015, representatives of 11 states along the Western Balkans route (known as contact points) began to meet and exchange information on a weekly basis. This kick-started action else- where. By the end of October, both the Council and the Commission had also activated their own crisis coordination mechanisms, IPCR and Argus. Together, these constituted the backbone of EU high-level coordination during the crisis. Much of the response relied on the activism of specific, key individuals ... who were willing to work collaboratively and creatively across EU institutions and portfolios. In March 2016, the signing of the EU-Turkey Statement to stem the flow of migrants across the Aegean raised a whole new set of coordination and leadership

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