Nobody Move! Myths of the EU Migration Crisis Crisis EU Migration of the Myths Move! Nobody Myths of the EU Migration Crisis
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QN-AA-17-004-EN-C CHAILLOT PAPER Nº 143 — December 2017 Nobody move! Nobody move! Myths of the EU migration crisis crisis EU migration of the Myths move! Nobody Myths of the EU migration crisis BY Roderick Parkes European Union Institute for Security Studies Chaillot Papers 100, avenue de Suffren | 75015 Paris | France | www.iss.europa.eu 2017 — December Nº 143 PAPER CHAILLOT ISBN 978-92-9198-639-2 EU Institute for Security Studies 100, avenue de Suffren 75015 Paris http://www.iss.europa.eu Director: Antonio Missiroli © EU Institute for Security Studies, 2017. Reproduction is authorised, provided the source is acknowledged, save where otherwise stated. Print ISBN 978-92-9198-639-2 ISSN 1017-7566 doi:10.2815/71658 QN-AA-17-004-EN-C PDF ISBN 978-92-9198-638-5 ISSN 1683-4917 doi:10.2815/972188 QN-AA-17-004-EN-N Published by the EU Institute for Security Studies and printed in Luxembourg by Imprimerie Centrale. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2017. Cover image: Rackham, Arthur (1903), ‘Danae Cast Adrift’. Cover image credit: Mary Evans/SIPA NOBODY MOVE! MYTHS OF THE EU MIGRATION CRISIS Roderick Parkes CHAILLOT PAPERS December 2017 143 The author Roderick Parkes is a Senior Analyst at the EUISS where he works on issues of international home affairs cooperation. He holds a PhD from the University of Bonn. Acknowledgments The author would like to acknowledge a small group of think-tank experts who built bridges between academics and policymakers during the crisis, and took time out to discuss their work: Oleg Chirita, Jean- Christophe Dumont, Malin Frankenhaeuser, Ralph Genetzke, Leonhard den Hertog, Gerald Knauss, Anna Knoll, Fransje Molenaar, Ninna Nyberg Sørensen, Tobias Pietz, Jan Schneider, Mattia Toaldo, Florian Trauner and Astrid Ziebarth. He would also like to thank his colleagues Daniel Fiott, Florence Gaub and Eva Pejsova for expertise on specific matters, and most particularly Annelies Pauwels for co-authoring the short papers on which this longer study draws and for coordinating the graphics. Finally, a special word of thanks to Antonio Missiroli who, as director of the EUISS, gave the author the time and space to turn the scores of interviews and roundtable discussions into the present paper. The author bears sole responsibility for the interpretation of events presented here and for any factual errors. Contents Foreword 5 Antonio Missiroli Introduction 7 Before the crisis 19 1 Understanding the EU’s migration diplomacy 21 During the crisis: nine dilemmas for migration diplomacy 35 2 1. Lack of readiness: projecting power to project migrant numbers 37 2. Border management: the line between internal and external security 47 3. Mixed flows: from ‘hotspots’ in Greece to hot spots abroad 57 4. Libya: expanding the EU’s ‘neighbourhood watch’ 69 5. West Africa: dropping the development approach 81 6. East Africa: how do you solve a problem like Eritrea? 93 7. The EU asylum model: turning global rule-takers into rule-makers 105 8. The UN migration summit: new friends in an unexpected place 117 9. Region-building: reinventing divide and rule 129 After the crisis 139 3 Flows, pools and bridges 141 Annex 151 Abbreviations 153 Foreword We all still remember the dramatic pictures – at sea and on land – from the migrant crisis that engulfed Europe in 2015-2016, and we are still confronted with the impact of those months on our polities and policies. By forcing EU leaders and officials, in particular, to act quickly and decisively in the face of a massive inflow of refugees and asylum-seekers fleeing conflict-ridden regions, the migrant crisis challenged a number of commonly traded assumptions and established practices that had long characterised the Union’s external action. As a result, the EU and its member states had to improvise and to try and test new, potentially messy approaches – as well as deal with their likely or unintended consequences. In this Chaillot Paper, Roderick Parkes provides three things at the same time: • An insightful and well-documented overview and analysis of the crisis itself, and the EU’s responses; • An enlightening critical review (and comparison) of the ways in which external experts and internal practitioners looked at the crisis, its drivers and its policy ramifications; • A first balanced assessment of the effects of the decisions taken (or not) to date and their overall impact on both EU policymaking in general and the EU’s external action in particular. In doing so, he provides the first comprehensive reconstruction of the frantic processes and steps that shaped the Union’s crisis response in 2015-2016 and beyond, as well as an evidence-based and compelling narrative about the ‘making’ of the new common approach adopted since then. For the EUISS, situated as it is at the juncture between the world of external experts and that of EU policymakers, this represents a remarkable contribution to a debate that is set to continue in the years to come. Antonio Missiroli Paris, November 2017 5 Introduction Did the EU break down one too many foreign policy silos, flout one too many international taboos, in its handling of the migration crisis? European diplomats usually say they do their best work when they are dismantling the EU’s paper walls and finding new ways to make the EU’s power felt. Comprehensive; coordinated; complementary – these key words embody the EU’s guiding principles when operating abroad. But migration is a sensitive policy field, migrants are vulnerable individuals, and migration cooperation can be a matter of utmost delicacy. So did the centralisation of policy go too far this time? On this subject, migration policymakers and experts have clear ideas, which are often poles apart. Policymakers argue that they needed to mobilise all available means to deliver an effective response to the migration challenge. Experts believe the EU abused its international influence to shift the burden abroad. This Chaillot Paper contextualises the EU’s migration diplomacy, taking a sympathetic look at the dilemmas facing policymakers. It identifies nine important shifts in European foreign policy that took place during the migration crisis, offering an explanation of why each occurred and arguing that they could amount to a sustainable strategy. Creating diplomatic heft Once EU leaders agreed that migration control was their overriding priority, European diplomats were able to start behaving differently. The European Union has a reputation on the world stage as a bureaucratic and somewhat disjointed player. It is not exactly known for twisting arms. At best, it ranks as a ‘market power’ – wealthy, fond of defining new norms, but ultimately not a real global heavyweight. In response to the burgeoning migration crisis, however, the EU now deployed an arsenal of billions of euros in aid and a small army of technical experts, migration liaison officers and crisis-management personnel – and marshalled them with the velvet glove of diplomacy. For once, the EU was coordinating all available tools, and was making clear that it expected something in return for its spending, in Turkey, in the Middle East and in Africa. And why not? This was an emergency. More than 150,000 migrants crossed the Central Mediterranean to Italy in 2014, mainly from the Horn and West Africa; and 7 Nobody move! Myths of the EU migration crisis even these numbers were eclipsed in 2015 when Syrian refugees found a new path to Europe through Turkey. European diplomats were surely right to remind partners of their obligations under international law and to help them get their own borders under control; they were surely right to accelerate long-overdue aid reforms to get ‘more bang for the EU’s buck’ and to deal with international problems that they had previously shied away from. During this period, one third of the world’s 60 million displaced persons were sheltering in the EU’s near abroad, often in hostile conditions. And as many as 60 million more were predicted to begin moving northwards towards Europe in the coming five years, as they abandoned Africa’s new deserts. So surely the EU was justified in sending envoys to partner governments in Africa, the Middle East and Asia to explain the implications should they refuse to control irregular migrant flows, host refugees or repatriate their own citizens. In short, many of the legal and conceptual constraints on EU power had probably been ripe for dismantling, and the migration crisis acted as a catalyst in this regard. And yet, there are good reasons why the EU created policy silos in the first place. The EU is normally careful to tailor its foreign policies according to geography. It unleashes its full economic power only on nearby Turkey and the Western Balkans: they are (in theory at least) due to join the Union one day as members, and the EU expects them to emulate its policies. The EU exerts lighter influence on a long arc of neighbours from Belarus to Morocco: these countries are bound to the EU as much by geographic accident as political choice, and they have tricky neighbours of their own to handle. And the EU’s policies towards an outer swathe of fragile states in Africa, Asia and Latin America are largely confined to classic development work. But in 2015, the EU began exercising upon distant Ethiopia or Niger the kind of leverage it normally uses only in nearby Serbia or Turkey, with repercussions all along migration routes. That year, the EU also began drawing its crisis management and humanitarian aid policies into overtly migration-related tasks. These tools are, in their own particular ways, designed to be needs-based. They work best when they are insulated from the EU’s immediate geographic and political interests and when they are allowed to respond to demand anywhere in the world – addressing emergency conditions on the ground in crisis zones in South Asia or stepping into gaps around warzones in Africa left by international peacekeeping bodies like the United Nations.