The EU-Turkey statement - A threat to the legitimacy of the EU?

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In 2015, 65,3 million people were displaced worldwide, including 11,7 million Syrians. The Arab Spring in 2011 led to a bloody civil war in Syria, which turned into a proxy war that is still going on today (UNHCR 2015). This caused an influx of refugees and migrants into the EU. 19 January 2016, Donald Tusk issued a stark warning that the EU had “no more than two months” to tackle the migration crisis engulfing the 28-nation bloc or face the collapse of its passport-free Schengen zone. A lack of solidarity between the Member States and a failing European Common Asylum System triggered a political response. In order to deal with the influx of migrants and refugees trying to cross the Aegean to reach Europe, the EU struck a deal with Turkey, called the EU-Turkey statement (The Council 2016d). This agreement had far-reaching consequences whose effects still continue. In this thesis, the EU-Turkey agreement will be analysed as part of a wider development of the EU’s external border management. The thesis will argue that the EU-Turkey statement fits the pattern of bilateral deals being agreed with third countries, to secure the EU’s external borders, which makes it ideal as a case study. As the analysis in the chapters that follow will suggest it is part of the transformation of migration governance that started with the creation of the Schengen-area in 1985 and was redefined after 9/11 and the Arab Spring.

The focus of EU migration governance seems to have shifted to policies of deterrence and securitization. This has led to an outsourcing and off-shoring of external border management and asylum policies. The EU has preached its high asylum standards to its neighbouring countries for years but now seems to be doing the complete opposite (Bialasiewicz 2011; Van Houtum 2010; Collett 2016). The irregular influx of refugees almost collapsed the Schengen-area and made the Member States put up temporary border controls. A lack of solidarity between the Member States further complicated the situation. Certain Member States closed off their borders and let other Member States hold all the burden. Did the political impotence, and lack of solidarity, drive the Commission and the Member States to this solution? Why was it so difficult to solve the “crisis”, while the EU is one of the most wealthy and powerful blocs in the world? And what does this state of affairs, the way the EU deals with refugees, say about the future of the EU? In this thesis, the following research question will be answered: How has the EU’s external border management changed in the last fifteen years, and how can EU-Turkey statement be seen as emblematic of these transformations?

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1. Literature Review

In this chapter, an overview will be given of the relevant literature concerning developments of the EU’s external border management. Firstly, the connection between citizenship and security will be explained. This is important because they have always been firmly connected in modern politics. Secondly, a critical security studies framework and a Foucauldian governmentality approach will be used to explain developments in the EU’s external border management policies. A relinking of territory and security has defined the development of the EU’s external border management policies. This has led to an off-shoring and out-sourcing of the EU’s external border management. This trend will be crucial in understanding the formation of the EU-Turkey statement, and the wider implications of this agreement.

1.1 Citizenship and Security

In order to understand the developments in European external border management, and the impact securitizing practices have on asylum seekers, it is important to outline how security and citizenship have always been firmly connected in modern politics. Guaranteeing the safety of citizens and citizens demanding security has been one of the organizing dynamics of modern states (Hobbes 1996). Both security and citizenship practices are at the same time a governmental practice securing the status of citizens and the authority of political apparatuses, and a resource of counter-practices challenging the effects of securitizing. Through citizenship, conceptions of security and their effects become politically negotiated and contested. (Guillaume and Huysmans et al. 2013, 2).

The almost symbiotic link between security and citizenship can be dated back as far as the first expressions of government. This relation is described in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789). Security is not only presented as one of the central rights, but it is placed alongside resistance to opposition: ‘The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.’ (Guillaume and Huysmans et al. 2013, 2). Security is a natural right of men and citizens, but it also commands citizenship. The government protects its citizens and dictates order. Through this order, citizens can exercise their rights. By setting the rules (laws), the government makes it possible for citizens to fulfil their natural rights. The government, and in modern times, the state is a necessary condition for a political being to express his natural rights. The government or state has the power to institute frameworks that make this possible (Guillaume and Huysmans et al. 2013, 2-3; Hobbes 1996).

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In 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights formulated security of person as a fundamental right. In article 3 it states: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person”. Furthermore, in article 13 the freedom of movement was formulated. By declaring security as a universal human right, it has been ultimately connected to citizenship in diverse ways. Citizenship and security work together to separate those with the right to security from those who are excluded from it, the former by granting and denying right, the latter by separating the citizenry from those seen as endangering the rights of men and citizens. Moreover, declaring security as a right of citizens has opened up tensions that require negotiations. The right of security should not only mean a right to be protected by the state, but also a right to be saved from oppression. These interactions of security and citizenship have been active in various ways in modern times. Declarations of rights are often combined with declarations of protection for citizens from those that want to challenge, disrupt, or undermine the delivery of these rights. This is also the case when it comes to freedom of movement. Freedom of movement has been limited and restricted to guarantee the state’s national sovereign power (Guillaume and Huysmans et al. 2013, 3-4; De Genova and Peutz 2010, 33-34; Balibar 2002a, 46-50).

In the past security and citizenship were inherently linked through territorialized political units, like the state or state-like organisations. Now, they are more and more defining global governmental regimes. As a result, citizenship is increasingly governed through the inter- and transnationalisation of rights, but also through the inter- and transnationalisation of security practices such as standardizing border controls and sharing intelligence. A general shift has taken place that is very relevant to explain the development of the EU’s external border management in the last 15 years. Citizenship as the enactment of rights claims has increasingly been replaced with the securitizing of citizenship: the constitution of citizens as ‘low-risk’ individuals. In an era when post-national citizenship is supposedly taking over from more territorialized and sovereign conceptions of citizenship, the latter are being reworked in inter- and transnationalising techniques governing insecurities, such as the international organisation of detention centres, European visa policies and regulation of borders across states. This securitising of citizenship has been the result of 9/11 and various terrorist attacks that followed since then in Western-Europe and North-America. This ‘war on terror’ has been fought to a large extent through citizenship policies and practices aimed at securing identity. Furthermore, it is being fought on two fronts: protecting and proving identity. This has led not only to the securitising of citizenship but also to the securitising of borders and migration. This shift in the way citizenship is perceived is crucial in understanding the developments in the EU’s external border management of the last 15 years (Guillaume and Huysmans et al. 2013, 4-5; Mountz 2015; Van Houtum 2010; Balibar 2002a, 31-50; Geiger and Pecoud 2013; Squire 2009; Krysta and Rygiel 2006, 145-146).

In the EU, the connecting of security and migration, and its bearing on citizenship is strongly connected to the removal of internal border control. This will be discussed later on in this thesis. The practice of

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deportation is a good example of security practices governing citizenship, this practice is a consequence of the international order. The modern order of citizenship, in which population is divided and distributed between territories and sovereigns, and in which rights mostly depend on national membership within territorial polities, does not reproduce itself naturally. Population transfer during the middle of the twentieth century, to create ethnically homogenous nations, very powerfully illustrates this. Whereas deportation in modern times is mostly reserved for ‘irregular migrants’ that might form a threat to the rights of citizens (Guillaume and Huysmans et al. 2013, 6; De Genova and Peutz et al. 2010, 96-98; Geiger and Pecoud 2013, 73-96).

In the traditional Hobbesian sense, the relationship between citizens and violence is at the heart of the state. The state must protect its citizens from violence against each other and from outsiders. Thus, the state monopolizes the legitimate use of violence and demands from citizens that they can be called upon to defend the state. However, insecurity does not only belong to citizens. Citizens are able to challenge the state’s monopoly over the legitimate use of force by mobilizing against the institutions of the state. This means security as the control and exercise of violence has an uneasy relationship with citizenship. The Arab Spring, a series of uprising all across the Arab world, that started in December 2010 in Tunisia is a good example of the role people have in shaping their own destiny by standing up to security regimes that had for decades attempted to shape, control and enforce citizenship by excluding vast segments of their populations from various rights and political life on religious, ethnic and economic grounds. In modern politics, a sharp tension has manifested itself between democratic and securitised citizenship. In democratic citizenship, rights to make the government accountable for its action, prevail over the demand for obedience from citizens in the name of protecting them from violence. In securitized citizenship, the latter prevails over the former. Tensions between democratic citizenship and security citizenships have come to dominate the debate about refugees, and external border management in recent times (Guillaume and Huysmans 2013, 8; Weber 2008; Rojas 2009; De Genova and Peutz et al. 2010, 161).

Since 9/11, states have increasingly limited citizenship rights of migrants, in order to ‘secure’ the citizenship of its own citizens. This ‘othering’ has been described by Andrijasevic (2010): “The abuses of citizenship rights of migrants are often explained as arising from a state of exception enforced through the condition of ‘abandonment’ in which migrants, subjected to the Rule of Law, are at the same time deprived of recourse to the law or its protection.” (De Genova and Peutz et al. 2010, 161). What is interesting is that these political shifts in the Arab world intended to secure more rights would lead to the exclusion from citizenship rights of people fleeing conflict through asylum regimes and visa policies. The EU’s internal liberalisation of cross-border labour mobility for EU citizens led to a tightening of control and management efforts at the external borders. At the borders of the EU, a powerful and security-obsessed distinction has increasingly been constructed between those who belong

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to the EU and those who do not, based on the faith of birth (Van Houtum and Pijpers 2007, 291; Van Houtum 2010, 957). These developments and an increase in tensions between democratic citizenship and securitized citizenship can be explained by the relinking of territory and security. This will be outlined in the next chapter.

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1.2 Governmentality of external border management

To shed insight in the development of the EU’s external border management, it is important to outline the concept of ‘governmentality’. This neologism was invented by Michel Foucault in reference to a domain he called ‘governmental rationality’. Foucault’s focus was not government understood in an institutional or philosophical sense but the history of the art of government. In political studies governmentality, research has been particularly focussed on the analysis of liberalism and neoliberalism as arts of government (Walters and Haahr 2005, 3).

Governmentality can be used as a toolkit rather than a theory. Four different kinds of tools can be taken from it. Governmentality can be used as: “a particular form of critical and reflexive political analysis which focuses on mentalities of government; an historicized investigation of changing forms of power; a thematization of the relationality of power and the identity of the governed; a concern with the technologies of power” (Walters and Haahr 2005, 5). As Foucault put it, government and power are never exercised in general terms. It is not reason in general that is implemented, but always a very specific type of “rationality”. Using governmentality to look at European integration can, therefore, clarify the rationality behind the recent, and not so recent developments in external border management. The nature and function of state borders in the ‘advanced industrialized regions of the world at the start of the twenty-first century has changed. By the start of the 1990s, certain theorists equated globalization with the advent of a ‘borderless world’. Quite the contrary has happened: law enforcement budgets for border controls have sharply risen, new legislation has been put into place targeted at ‘irregular’ entries and mobilities, the deployment of sophisticated surveillance and information technology, stricter visa requirements, and ongoing militarization of border controls, are all developments that point to a more closed world. It could be said a rebordering of the state is taking place (Walters 2006, 188; Andreas 2003, 3).

Foucault’s studies of madness, crime and sexuality have taught us to think about power in terms of its dispositions and functionings. So, what kind of dispositions and functionings characterize the border today? Border control according to Walters has moved closer towards functions of policing. Discourses about organized crime, global terrorism, undocumented migration and other dangerous mobilities have legitimized and organized this shift (Walters 2006, 199). A worldwide discourse on migration has constituted itself, where governance of population has long been a national process, migration management now contains elements that point to the governance of the world population, which is in line with a neoliberal and globalizing era that is characterized by the necessity of human mobility (Geiger and Pecoud 2010, 18; Balibar 2004, 68-69; De Genova and Peutz 2010; Geiger and Pecoud 2013). This discourse has also manifested itself in EU border policies and started with the creation of Europe’s Schengen-area.

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1.3 Critical security studies in an EU-context

In 1985 representatives of five of the ten EEC Member States came together and signed the Schengen Agreement, in the town of Schengen Luxembourg, to lift border controls among themselves. These Member States were Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg and The Netherlands. In 1990 the Agreement was supplemented by the Schengen Implementation Convention, which took effect in 1996 and set out a series of measures designed to ensure the ‘free movement of persons’ across their combined territories. What was included in these measures was: enhanced cooperation in immigration policy (for example a common list of nationalities requiring a visa to enter the Schengen-area); an initiative to end ‘multiple’ asylum applications (so-called ‘asylum-shopping’); and improvements in the areas of cross-border police and judicial cooperation. Membership of Schengen was soon expanded to include most of the other EU Member States, with the exception of the UK and Ireland. What began as a set of security and mobile practices agreed amongst a small club of states outside the EU framework has now been generalized across the geographical and institutional space of the EU and beyond (Walters and Haahr 2005, 93-94; Hix and Høyland, 278-280).

As Walters and Haahr (2005) state, critical security studies have urged us to comprehend security as a social construction. Security should not be understood as a fixed or stable referent, but as a ‘speech act’. Security is a practice, a specific way of framing an issue. It is furthermore characterized by dramatizing an issue as having an absolute priority. This observation has led to Waever and others to make ‘securitization’ rather than security their focus of study. Securitization should be understood as a way in which particular issues are framed to be security issues. Part of this discourse is the geopolitical discourse that creates ideological boundaries between ‘Them’ and ‘Us’, and views ‘Them’ as a threat to ‘Us’. This denaturalizes security and reveals security to be a particular rather than a necessary way of governing. To build on this the Schengen-area can thus be understood not as simply a reaction to a set of ‘objective problems’ such as rising levels of unwanted migration towards the West, the growth of transnational organized crime and the spread of globalization. But it should be understood as made possible by actors who succeeded in representing these issues as existential threats and risks (Waever 1996, 106; Walters and Haahr 2005, 95; Buzan et al. 1998; Dalby 1990).

The completion of the Single Market has furthered the opportunity for security experts to reorder political priorities, these experts framed the neoliberal initiative of the Single Market as a source and a cause of all sorts of potential insecurity. After the abolition of internal border controls, transnational flows of goods, capital, services, and people would challenge the public order and the rule of law. Market-building had led to a ‘security deficit’ that had to be solved. Apart from the ‘security deficit’ because of market-building, the longer-term narrative of societal security has manifested itself. Societal security refers to the development that threats are less likely to be associated with aggression from other states, but instead with challenges to society, in particular to social, cultural and national identity

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(Walters and Haahr 2005, 96; Geiger and Pecoud 2010, 90-91; Huysmans 2000; Buzan et al. 1998; Dalby 1990; Lipschutz 1995, 67).

What has made this analysis ever more relevant in recent years is that security has been conceptualized as being ‘beyond politics’. During the Cold War paradigm, security was linked to aggression from other states and violation of state sovereignty. Societal security has taken over because state power was constrained through European integration. It has arisen within the political and ideological space that opened up by the lessening of this paradigm that dominated Cold War security debates. Societal security provides political life with new enemies, new ways of defining ‘Us’ versus ‘Them’. Instead of states, blocs, and alliances that were a threat to ‘Us’ in the past, the danger is now represented by non-state actors and shadowy networks: people traffickers, drug smugglers, terrorists and “irregular” migrants. Furthermore, by conceptualizing these threats as being ‘beyond politics’ effectively undermines efforts to conduct a substantive debate over security policies (Walters and Haahr 2005, 96; Geiger and Pecoud 2010, 90-91; Buzan et al. 1998; Dalby 1990).

As Walters and Haahr (2005) note, the EU’s external border policy is often referred to as a ‘fight against’ or a ‘combat’ with irregular immigration. Using such terms is far from neutral and politicizes the debate. As with terrorism or drugs, we are invited to locate ourselves and our political authorities in a kind of ‘war’ with dangerous adversaries that threaten our very existence and lie ‘beyond politics’. A space is named where the problem is not something to be regulated but defeated. Thus, the image of the immigrant is not dramatized only in the language of populist and xenophobic politicians and social movements, it is also seemingly embedded in technical policy documents. Furthermore, in these technical policy documents ‘transit countries’ and ‘countries of origin’ are identified. Transit countries are recognized as weak points in the ‘migration chain’ which fail to adequately police ‘irregular’ mobility. As regards to ‘countries of origin’, they are extensively discussed in terms of ‘readmissions and returns policy’. Irregular migration is imagined as an existential threat to society, in order to rehabilitate the state’s mechanisms of internal control over its territorial boundaries (Walter and Haahr 2005, 96-98; Geiger and Pecoud 2013, 33-34; Squire 2011; Buzan et al. 1998; Dalby 1990; Bigo 2002). The EU’s version of ‘anti-irregular migration policy’, can be read as a story about bordering. It identifies the effective management of the EU’s external borders as one of the key responses to the ‘threat’ of irregular migration. The EU, however, is not content with only securing its own borders. It seeks to contribute to a wider movement that elevates border control to the point where it is represented as one of the most vital expressions and responsibilities of sovereign statehood. The EU promotes border control globally as an element of good governance. Anti-irregular migration policy employed by the EU draws a clear line between the legal and the illegal, freedom and coercion, civilization and anarchy. What is most problematic about the anti-illegal immigration discourse, is that it imagines Europe as a bounded, self-contained region/entity, distinct from and confronted by an external world of similarly

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bounded, but far less well-governed entities. Within this space illegal immigration comes to be imagined as a potentially chaotic set of forces from the world’s most troubled states ‘flooding’ the Schengen-area, and threatening the very existence of the EU itself (Geiger and Pecoud 2010, 90-91; Buzan et al. 1998; Dalby 1990; Bigo 2002; Geiger and Pecoud 2013; Huysmans 2000).

In the 1970s the question of crime moved into the centre of political and policy debates in Western democracies. It went from being one amongst many ‘problems’ which governments were expected to ‘fix’ to being one of the most important ‘problems’ that formed an existential threat to society. Neoconservative governments in the US and the UK were the first to fully exploit the obsession with crime within politics. However, it is no longer only confined to such governments. This neoliberal discourse, that aims to penalize societal insecurity, can nowadays be found within programmes of many of Europe’s parties and governments. In the past crime had a social context and called for social strategies, rather than harsher punishments. This ‘welfarist’ understanding of crime is not the most important within national or EU policies today. In the new discourse, perpetrators are not like ‘Us’, they are ‘wrong-doers’. Poorer states can certainly be breeding grounds for organized crime, but instead of focussing on socially and economically developing these states, the overwhelming emphasis of policy is placed elsewhere. It is placed on detecting, apprehending, and punishing wrong-doers and repelling the unwanted flows of migration facilitated by poorer states. These wrong-doers become the cause as well as the symptom of crime, and stopping them is the solution. The EU employs this discourse to produce political impressions of strong, effective and relevant governance. Crime should not only be reduced, it should also be ‘fought’. Irregular migration forms an existential threat to the EU and should be prevented by all means (Walters and Haahr 2005, 99-101; Cohen 1996; Garland 1996; Wacquant 1999; Dalby 1990; Buzan et al. 1998; Huysmans 2000).

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1.4 Governmentality of EU external border management

Foucault’s remarks on security are presented mostly in his lectures on governmentality. Foucault showed how policy during the early modern period in Europe encapsulated a mentality of government, embodying a particular conception of security. Within this discourse of police, the question of security is inseparable from the dream of an all-seeing, all-knowing eye of the ‘geometer king’ and his agents. Security is linked to the dream of a fully transparent and ordered realm. Social order is not something natural, but must be fabricated by interventions of the authorities. Foucault than observed that liberal governance marked a significant mutation in this method of security. Instead of social order being fabricated by political, legal and administrative interventions, society possesses its own, immanent forms of order. Liberal security in contrast to early-modern security seeks to intervene in ongoing processes, it seeks to guide disorder (Walters and Haahr 2005, 101-103; Foucault et al. 2008; Agamben and Emcke 2001).

As stated earlier, in the case of the Schengen-area the very act of removing internal border controls, rendered the EU ‘vulnerable’ to ‘those who seek to deny or abuse that freedom’. This ‘new freedom’ constituted a cause of insecurity. The creation of the Schengen-area has thus facilitated a mutation in the EU logic on security. The liberal conception of security which was at the heart of the European integration project had now been combined with another conception of security. This new conception found its image of order and security in the power of policing and security practices. The political space of the Schengen-area became a model of networks and of transnational liberal policing. It is ‘liberal policing’ because it emphasizes direct linkages which connect experts and security agencies across borders. The Dublin Convention, which was adopted in 1990, is a good example of transnational liberal policing. The Conventions stated it should be the signatory state which facilitated the entry of the asylum-seeker which takes single responsibility for addressing his or her claim. Once an applicant is rejected they are not allowed to apply for asylum in the other Member States, in this way each state had to take responsibility for the security of the Schengen-area. On its border, each Member State had become the representative of the other Member States. The border was no longer a place where states faced each other as potential enemies, but it had become a strategic node within a wider network of control, opposing itself to the networks of crime and terror. (Walters and Haahr 2005, 103-107; Balibar 2002, 78; Kelstrup and Williams, 171-204).

In his lectures in 1978, Foucault helped us think about the historicity of security, he stressed the idea that the relationship of security, territory, and population do not have a fixed relationship, this relationship has varied over time. By the end of the nineteenth century in Western-Europe, it is possible to speak of a de-privileging of territory. Territory was central to the identity of the early modern state, in the traditional Hobbesian sense, but with the rise of governmentality what became more important was the knowledge and development of the state’s forces. Indeed, the first emergence of the word

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‘policy’ was linked to the preoccupation to ‘make the forces of the state increase from within’. States continued to fight bloody wars over the control of territory in the twentieth century, however, what became equally, if not more important, were questions concerning the condition of the population. The importance of the population’s wealth, vitality, mortality, morale and so forth, shows that the notion of ‘territory’ is only one of a number of ways in which local, national and transnational spaces have been imagined, organized and acted upon. A long-term shift within regimes of political power has thus taken place from territory to population (Walters and Haahr 2005, 107-108; Foucault et al. 2008; Agnew 1999).

In the 1950s when the European Community (EC) came into being, European integration did not advance within the framework of a European Defence Community, instead, it unfolded along an economic trajectory. Had it not evolved along an economic trajectory it would probably have become associated with territorial power. The contrary happened, the EC was to secure states and regions by gradually (re)opening them and inserting them into transnational flows of people, goods, and investment. States were still concerned with their territory in the post-war period, but territory was not central to the kind of government practiced within the framework of the EC. It sought to secure Western Europe not by protecting borders, but by making its social and economic forces dependent on each other and increase from within. This rationality of economic principles was employed by the founders of the EU to desacralize the historically volatile pattern of European national borders (Walters and Haahr 2005, 108-109; O’Dowd and Wilson 1996, 9; Kelstrup and Williams 171-204; Van Middelaar 2013, 135-151).

Taking this into account the creation of the Schengen-area should thus not only be seen as an instance of securitization of immigration, but it has also implicated the EU in territorial practices of security. It had relinked security and territory. In its fight against irregular migration, the EU has once again become preoccupied with the defence of territory. Not against invading armies, but against the transnational flow of irregular people and goods. Good governance practice of the EU’s external border management dictated the need for new walls, watchtowers, refugee detention centres, and information systems. Repelling ‘Them’ at the border or even before the border, in the case of visa policies had become a central feature of the EU’s external border management (Walters and Haahr 2005, 109-110; Geiger and Pecoud 2010; Squire 2011; Geiger and Pecoud 2013; Dalby 1990; Buzan et al. 1998).

To summarize, firstly, the creation of the Schengen area, and the abolishment of internal borders had become a source of vulnerability that would be exploited by wrong-doers. Secondly, the Schengen-area, on the one hand, cast the subject of government as a threatened and vulnerable individual, on the other hand, it allowed the EU to position itself as a protector of ‘law-abiding citizens’. Tensions between democratic citizenship and securitized citizenship grew. The Schengen-area opened up a space parallel to that of democracy where citizenship is constructed not as a participatory practice, but as a right to be

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protected from ‘alien threats’. Finally, it had formed a new spatialization of Europe, as a space of territories that had to be defended against various malign transnational mobilities. Security now not only operated just on the deep interior of the European economic space but on a horizontal plane, the space of mobile flows (Walters and Haahr 2005, 111-112; Guillaume and Huysmans 2013).

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1.5 Off-shoring and out-sourcing the EU’s external border management

The relinking of security and territory within the EU had consequences for the way migration is perceived, and paved the way for the formation of several migration and border institutions. The Schengen Agreement had freed the movement of goods and people among the Member States, and extended rights almost equivalent to citizenship across signatory states. However, it also caused a relinking of territory and sovereignty in the EU. The customs and border guard posts between the Member States that had been abandoned, were replaced by watch towers and radar detections systems at the outer edges of the EU. While the internal borders disappeared, the external borders were increasingly strengthened (Casas-Cortes et al. 2012, 38).

With the consolidation of the EU through the treaties signed in Maastricht (1992), Amsterdam (1997), Nice (2001) and Lisbon (2007), governance of migration and borders has become increasingly more important and has become a central competence of the EU. Member States still have important autonomy with regard to their own border controls, but there has been a tendency among the EU and its Member States to increase policy alignment and coordination. This harmonization process has not only led to an integrated approach between the Member States but also with non-EU states. Cross-border policing, and bilateral Cross-border management with non-EU countries started during the Budapest process and solidified as Central and East-European candidate states were promised accession to the EU. One of the main requirements to join the EU was external border management. With the full participation of accession countries on the alignment of external border management policies, these countries accepted the redefinition of security concerns and territorial delimitations. This led to concerns that the Iron Curtain, which limited people’s mobility, would be replaced by a ‘blue curtain’. This blue curtain would reflect the security and political interests of certain EU Member States rather than the needs of the candidate states (Casas-Cortes et al. 2012, 40; Van Houtum and Pijpers 2007).

The European Neighbourhood Programme (ENP) was launched in 2003, with the aim of fostering ‘stability and peace’ and promoting the EU’s institutional and normative powers. This process is not backed by accession agreements but instead, focusses on economic integration between neighbouring states; between neighbouring states and the EU Member States; and on the monitoring and control of EU-directed migration. Its original purpose was to foster stabilisation, security, and prosperity in the EU’s southern and eastern neighbours through the EU’s soft power framework. Even though the EU imagines itself as a ‘soft’ and ‘civil’ power, its leaders have become increasingly explicit about the fact that the EU’s various ‘soft’ initiatives, should be aimed at protecting the EU from ‘hard’ threats. These ‘hard’ expressions of the EU’s power manifest themselves in: bordering practices; citizenship and right to entry regulations; and a variety of surveillance mechanisms. The ‘hard’ expressions of the EU’s power can be linked to the relinking of territory and security. Over the years, the EU has insisted on the

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legalization of measures of ‘pre-emptive security practice’, in particular, data gathering and biometric border controls. Securitization of the EU’s external borders has become a fundamental EU priority. The preoccupation with ‘securing the external’ has driven EU relations with its immediate ‘Neighbourhood’ for almost two decades now. Migration control has become a key priority of the ENP, with the EU’s neighbours increasingly called upon to act as the EU’s policemen. The idea is to create a buffer zone in neighbouring states, to ensure dangerous flows (of irregular migrants or other ‘wrong-doers’) from even approaching the external borders of the EU. To quote Walters (2010): “Embedded within the ‘combat against illegal immigration is a political imagination in which Europe is cast as a bounded, self-contained region distinct from and confronted by an external world of similarly bounded but far less well-governed political entities. Illegal immigration is at once a major symptom of this asymmetry in governance capacity, and a source of justification for Europe to involve itself in attempts to remake the world beyond it in the image of the well-governed, territorial state. In short, anti-illegal immigration activity is more than a branch of migration management. It is nothing less than state-making in a new form.’ (Geiger and Pecoud 2010, 75). The EU’s external border management has thus, become more and more about ‘off-shoring’ and ‘out-sourcing’. Border-work that has become increasingly implemented through a fluid assemblage of agreements and actors, with considerable slippage between bordering practices of Member States and what is done ‘on behalf’ of the EU (Bialasiewicz 2009, 79-80; Bialasiewicz 2011, 299; Bialasiewicz 2012, 845; Geiger and Pecoud 2010, 75; Geiger and Pecoud 2013).

These developments in the EU’s Neigbourhood, have been spurred on by the twin policy goals of economic integration among neighbouring states, and between neighbouring states and the EU Member States. Border externalization policies are directed not only towards the fixing of border lines but also toward the expansion and out-sourcing of strategies, such as the management of migration routes to adjacent countries and to non-neighbourhood countries. This emerging architecture of EU migration policy has been referred to as a ‘frontier regime’. Such frontier regimes consist of agreements about borders with neighbouring (and non-neighbouring) states, whether bilateral or multilateral. Such bilateral agreements often become the working precedents for the migration control strategies taken up at the EU level, as illustrated by bilateral agreements between Spain and Morocco, and Italy and Libya. (Casas-Cortes et al. 2012, 52-53; Bialasiewicz 2012; Casas-Cortes et al. 2016; Tazzioli 2016).

This new principle of ‘preventive protection’, had been introduced in 1993 by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The concept was quickly mobilized in Europe, creating the basis for an incremental and invisible policy wall around the EU, as was shown earlier. In 1994 the European Commission adopted a Communication on Immigration and Asylum Policies which outlined three main elements: action on migration pressure, control of migration flows, and integration. Decision-making and control of migrant management have been re-scaled with strong evidence of

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‘securitization’ in both cases. Strategies to control migration from a distance have corresponded with a rise in smuggling and trafficking originating beyond EU borders. The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees constituted the principle of non-refoulement. A fundamental principle of international law that forbids a country receiving asylum seekers from returning them to a country in which they would likely be in danger of persecution based on “race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”. It refers to the repatriation of people, including refugees into war zones and other disaster locales (Refugee Convention 1951). Hyndman and Mountz (2008) illustrate that a strategy of “neo-refoulement” has been deployed over the years to prevent the possibility of asylum by denying access to sovereign territory. Shifting from legal frameworks of protection to more politicized and securitized practices of exclusion, neo-refoulement uses geography to suspend access to asylum. At the borders of the EU, a distinction has been constructed, between the travellers who belong to the EU and those who do not, based on the fate of birth. To this end, the EU has composed a so-called ‘positive and negative’ list, which is used as a criterion for visa application. On the negative list, a significantly high number of Muslims and developing states are listed. To quote (Van Houtum 2010, 957): “There is a strong inclination to use this list not only as a tool to guarantee security in physical terms or in terms of ‘Western’ identity protection but also a means of keeping the world’s poorest out. Such global apartheid politics, loaded with rhetoric on selective access, burden, and masses, provokes the dehumanisation and illegalisation of the travel of those who were born in what the EU has defined as the ‘wrong country’, the wastable and deportable lives from countries on the negative list.” (Hyndman and Mountz 2008; Van Houtum 2010; Casas-Cortes et al. 2016; Bialasiewicz 2012; Tazzioli 2016; Tazzioli 2016a; Squire 2009).

Recent developments, with the Arab Spring, in particular, have led to a further securitization of the EU’s external border management. The EU’s protectionist and selective immigration policy has come to resemble a gated community in which the biopolitical control and management of immigration is, to a large extent a product of fear. This has led to internal policing, securitization, and militarization of border management. Which has become increasingly problematic, because it sustains and reproduces inequality and segregation (Van Houtum and Pijpers 2007). This change in migration governance, which seems to be focussed on deterrence and securitization, seems to clash with the imagined normative image of the EU. The EU has preached its high asylum standards to neighbouring countries for years, but by off-shoring and out-sourcing its asylum procedures and border management to neighbouring regimes that don’t have the same high asylum standards, and violate human rights, it has damaged this normative image it has always projected to the outside world. Furthermore, it could be said that the externalisation and securitization of border management have led to thousands of deaths on the Mediterranean and Aegean Sea. The next chapter contains a table that that presents in schematic and chronological fashion an overview of EU migration and border policies until 2014. In chapter 3, recent developments up until the EU-Turkey statement will be outlined.

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2. Developments up until the EU-Turkey statement

Legal and political overview of EU migration and border policies until 2014

Year

Policy and agreements

Brief description

1951 The Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (Geneva Convention)

This convention defined the term ‘refugee’ and outlines the rights of the displaced, as well as the legal obligations of States to protect them.

1957 Treaty of Rome The creation of the six-country European Economic Community and the freedom of movement for workers. 1967 Protocol relating to the

Status of Refugees

The 1967 Protocol removed both the temporal and geographic restrictions of the 1951 Convention.

1985 Schengen Agreement The creation of the internal Schengen-area of free movement and adjournment of internal border controls. Five Member States participated in this agreement.

1986 Single European Act Free movement of people for EU citizens.

1990 Dublin Convention Establishing that a single European state is responsible for any asylum application to avoid “asylum shopping”.

1991 The Budapest Process The Budapest process is a consultative forum for consulting on and coordinating migration and border policy. The Budapest process gained strong momentum during the accession process of Central- and Eastern-European states. Originally focused on Central- and Eastern-Europe, the process has since expanded into the Commonwealth of Independent States, including parts of Central Asia. Participants now include more than 50 governments and 10 international organizations, whose goal is to develop ‘comprehensive’ and ‘sustainable’ systems for ‘orderly’ migration.

1991 First EU-3rd country readmission agreement

The Schengen-area countries sign a readmission agreement with Poland.

1992 Maastricht Treaty: establishment of the European Union

The first step towards a space without internal borders, ensuring the free movement of goods, capital, and people.

1993 The EU postpones the total suppression of border controls

The Commission justified this through the wish to reconcile the requirements of the mobility of European people with the need to control international crime and to reduce migration. 1995 Schengen Convention The Schengen Agreement comes into force.

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(follow-up)

The Dublin Convention now applies to 12 Member States.

1997 Amsterdam Treaty The immigration and asylum bloc switches from intergovernmental cooperation to developing common EU policies over five years.

1999 Amsterdam Treaty comes into force / Tampere Programme

It is decided common norms should be set by 2004 on asylum, the movement of people, the integration and the integration of migrant. It is an explicit call for an external dimension to border management.

2000 Cotonou Agreement between the EU and 79 ACP (African, Caribbean, and Pacific) countries

As a provider of development aid, the EU imposes the principle of a readmission clause applying to their nationals on ACP countries and envisages extending it to migrants who have passed through their territory.

2003 Dublin II Regulation Only the first country reached by an asylum seeker will be responsible for processing an application.

2003 The start of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP).

The original aim of the ENP was fostering ‘stability and peace’ and promoting the EU’s institutional and normative powers. It increasingly turned into a tool for controlling EU-directed migration by coordinating: surveillance, information exchange and training of officers.

2004 Eurodac Regulation The creation of a unified database (of fingerprints) for the purpose of making the Dublin II Regulation enforceable. 2004 Council Regulation

creating Frontex

Establishment of the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Members States of the EU (Frontex).

2004 The Hague Programme (implementation 2005-2010)

The creation of an area of freedom, justice and security (FSJ) around two approaches: promoting a common policy and developing the external dimension of immigration and asylum policy. Issues concerning security will be most important. 2005 Directive on asylum

procedures

States may detain applicants in special facilities. Asylum requests may not result in the right to reside in the country. Exceptional procedures are envisaged: rejection of clearly unfounded applications, fast-track and priority procedures. The notions of safe countries of origin, first countries of asylum and safe third countries are placed in the spotlight. The right to an effective appeal clashes with the fact that this does

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not suspend deportation. The directive is heavily criticized by the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, UNHCR and NGO’s.

2005 Global Approach to Migration and Mobility (GAMM)

The GAMM is adopted, it articulates migration policy between and across the EU Member States with a special emphasis on cooperation with third countries. The GAMM conceives of migration policy along three broad policy pillars: combating irregular migration; migration and development; and legal labour migration. Although designed at first for African and Mediterranean countries, it has since expanded to include all other countries where the EU or its Member States might develop an external dimension to their migration and border policies.

2006 EU-Russian Federation readmission agreement

Return of people who have passed through Russia to travel irregularly to Europe. Five third countries participated in the readmission agreement: Hong Kong, Macao, Sri Lanka, Albania and Russia itself.

2007 EU-Ukraine readmission agreement

Readmission by Ukraine of people who entered the EU irregularly and travelled through it.

2008 Friendship and cooperation treaty between Italy and Libya

Among other things, this treaty decides the joint fight against irregular migration should be intensified. An electronic border surveillance system should be set up for Libyan Sea borders. Fifty percent of which Italy would finance, while the EU would be asked for the remaining fifty percent.

2008 The Council adopts the European Pact on Immigration and Asylum

The Pact calls for the negotiation of readmission agreements to be pursued, both at a Community and at bilateral levels.

2008 EU-Republic of Moldova Mobility Partnership

The EU and the Republic of Moldova signed a Mobility Partnership, these partnerships are the most complete framework for bilateral cooperation between the EU, and its partners, based on mutual offers of commitments and project initiatives covering mobility, migration and asylum issues, within the GAMM.

2009 Italian law to prohibit irregular migration and residence.

Between collective refoulements and Gadhafi’s visit to Rome, the Italian parliament adopts a law that creates an offence of illegal immigration and residence. The length of detention

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prior to expulsion increases from two to six months. Aiding irregular residence becomes liable to incur three years in prison.

2009 EU-Georgia Mobility Partnership

The EU and Georgia signed a Mobility Partnership.

2010 Greece-Turkey Agreement

Return to Turkey of irregular migrants.

2010 EU-Georgia Readmission Agreement

Simplified visa issuing in exchange for readmission by Georgia of people residing irregularly in the EU.

2010 EU-Pakistan Readmission Agreement

Return to Pakistan of irregular migrants.

2010 Cooperation agreement with Libya

Goals are fighting illegal immigration and strengthening the rights of refugees, fifty million euros are allocated by the EU to Libya for this purpose.

2011 EU-The Republic of Armenia Mobility Partnership.

The EU and the Republic of Armenia signed a Mobility Partnership.

2011 EU-Turkey Readmission Agreement

Turkey will take back the irregular migrants who have passed through their territory.

2011 Agreement between Italy and Libya on a common management of migration flows

The agreement allows the deportation of irregular migrants arriving from Libya as well as support for the country to set up preventive patrols.

2011 Amendment of Frontex regulation

Reinforcement, and widening of the role of Frontex, and it operational capacities. The agency will now be able to acquire its own equipment. Furthermore, fundamental rights provisions are reinforced and the non-refoulement principle is fully recognised.

2011 Renewal of Italy-Libya friendship agreement

Cooperation between both countries in the fight against irregular migrations is maintained according to the terms of agreements between Berlusconi and Gaddafi.

2012 Secret agreement between Italy and Libya

Reinforcing cooperation to fight irregular migration from Libyan to Italian coasts with the same means as before 2012. 2012 EU-Iraq Readmission

Agreement

Among other things, allows the readmission of Iraqis present irregularly in the EU and resolves to open negotiations for a

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readmission agreement applicable to Iraqis, third country nationals and stateless people.

2013 Eurosur regulation Eurosur is a European border surveillance system based on high-tech and data sharing mechanisms adopted by the European Parliament and deemed “crucial” to “help detect irregular vessels and entries”.

2013 EU-Turkey Readmission Agreement

Turkey accepts the return of undocumented migrants of any origin who would have entered the EU through its territory. 2013 EU-Republic of

Azerbaijan Mobility Partnership

The EU and the Republic of Azerbaijan signed a Mobility Partnership.

2014 EU-Republic of Belarus Mobility Partnership

The start of the negotiations for a Mobility Partnership.

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2.1 Geopolitical developments lead to rising refugee numbers

The Arab Spring, a series of protests and demonstrations across the Middle East and North Africa started on 17 December 2010, when Mohamed Bouazizi lit himself on fire to protest against the high unemployment, food inflation, corruption and lack of political freedoms in Tunisia. This sparked protests that eventually spread across the Arab world in the Middle East and North Africa. By 2015, these protests had often turned to civil conflicts and had led to a destabilisation of these regions. Furthermore, a bloody civil war had been going on in Syria for almost four years. By the end of 2015, 65.3 million individuals were forcibly displaced worldwide because of persecution, conflict, generalized violence, or human rights violations. An estimated 12.4 million people were newly displaced due to conflict or persecution in 2015. Children below eighteen years of age constituted about half of the refugee population in 2015. The conflicts in Syria and Iraq significantly contributed to the rise of the global number of displaced people. By the end of 2015, 11.7 million Syrians were displaced and were seeking protection within Syria or abroad. In 2014 the number of displaced Syrians was estimated by UNHCR to be at least 7.6 million. In one year, the number of displaced Syrians had increased with 4 million. In absolute numbers, more people are displaced now than after World War II (UNHCR 2014; UNHCR 2015).

During the second half of 2015, Europe witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of refugees and migrants arriving by sea. Hundreds of thousands of individuals embarked on a dangerous journey, crossing the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe in an effort to find safety. Overall, more than one million people arrived by sea in 2015, a more than fourfold increase compared to the previous year’s 216,000 arrivals. This rise was mostly due to increased movement across the Eastern Mediterranean to Greece. About half of these arrivals consisted of Syrians, whilst a significant proportion was made up by Iraqis and Afghans. The EU struggled to cope with this sudden spike in arrivals because transit countries like Greece and Italy had to carry most of the burden. Furthermore, these migrant flows had big consequences for the Dublin regulation. As stated earlier, the Dublin Regulation establishes the member state responsible for the examination of the asylum application. An asylum seeker must apply for asylum in the first EU country they have entered. If they have been registered, they can be returned to the country they arrived in after they cross borders into a different country. However, because most asylum seekers did not want to stay in Greece or Italy, and because of the borderless Schengen-area, it became increasingly difficult to enforce the Dublin regulation. This led to a situation where some countries allowed asylum seekers to transit through their territories, while others renounced the right to return them back or reinstated border controls within the Schengen-area. These practices strained European solidarity and triggered a political response (UNHCR 2015; Regulation 604/2013; The Commission 2017a).

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2.2 The European ‘refugee crisis’, Schengen under pressure

The 19th of April 2015, as many as 700 migrants were feared to have drowned off the Libyan coast, in what was one of the worst disasters involving migrants being smuggled to the EU. The UNHCR stated that the accident happened after the migrants saw a merchant ship in the distance and scrambled to attract its attention over-balancing the fishing boat in which they were travelling. Because of this tragedy, the European Council came together on the 23rd of April. The EU stated that it would mobilise all efforts at its disposal to prevent further loss of life at sea. Furthermore, it would tackle the ‘root causes’ of the humanitarian emergency that faced Europe. The EU emphasized it would strengthen its presence at sea to fight traffickers and to prevent irregular migration flows. In response, the Council reinforced the Frontex Operations Triton and Poseidon. Moreover, The Council stressed the importance of fighting traffickers in accordance with international law, the prevention of illegal migration flows by increasing the cooperation with African partners, and the reinforcement of internal solidarity and responsibility, by rapid implementation of the Common European Asylum System. To relieve the pressure on the frontline Member States, emergency aid had to be made available. During the Council meeting, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker tried to push EU policy on legal migration. He also tried to secure resettlement across Europe for 10.000 refugees. Instead, he had to settle for a first voluntary pilot project on resettlement for those qualifying for protection. European Parliament President Martin Schultz stressed that a common migration and asylum policy was the only way to respond adequately to the problem. He called for an EU-wide system for fairly distributing refugees throughout the bloc, the same asylum procedures across the EU, and an EU-wide system of legal migration for those who want to come and work. Several NGO’s, like Oxfam and Médecins Sans Frontières, criticized the outcome of the summit. They stated that the huge means and resources allocated to declaring war on smugglers were not equally invested in saving lives. Furthermore, they stated that refugees fleeing persecution needed safe and legal avenues for claiming asylum in accordance with the Refugee Convention (The Guardian 2015; The Council 2015; Euractiv 2015; Euractiv 2015a).

After the special meeting of the European Council in response to the tragedy on the Mediterranean, the European Commission adopted a European agenda on migration the 13th of May. The Commission called for swift and determined action in response to the loss of human life on the Mediterranean. The budget of the Frontex joint operations would be tripled. The Commission once more stressed the need for targeting the criminal smuggling networks. Common Security and Defence Policy (CDSP) operations were to be conducted to systematically identify, capture and destroy vessels used by smugglers. Another measure taken was strengthening Europol’s joint maritime information operation (JOT MARE). To deal with the situation in the Mediterranean the Commission announced they would propose triggering the emergency response system envisaged under Article 78(3) TFEU. The proposal

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would include a temporary distribution scheme for persons in clear need of international protection to ensure a fair and balanced participation of all Member States. They also announced they would propose a resettlement scheme to offer twenty thousand places, supported by an extra funding of 50 million euros. The Commission further emphasized Regional Development and Protection Programmes. Stepping up cooperation with Turkey, and reducing the incentives for irregular migration. Hours before the Commission unveiled their plans, the British interior minister, Theresa May criticized the EU’s approach, saying that by not sending economic migrants back, the bloc was encouraging them to come. The exemptions the UK, Denmark, and Ireland had on matters concerning asylum complicated matters even more. Italy, Germany, and Austria backed the quota scheme, but the EU as a whole was completely divided (Euractiv 2015b; COM(2015)240 final).

The 18th of May, the Council agreed to establish an EU military operation called ‘EUNAVFOR Med’ to break the business model of smugglers and traffickers in the Mediterranean. The 19th of May, the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán clashed with the Commission by insisting that Budapest had the right to debate closing the door to migrants and reintroducing the death penalty. The 27th of May, two weeks after the publication of the European Agenda on Migration, the Commission presented its first package of proposals. It included triggering the emergency response mechanism under Article 78(3) TFEU for the first time in order to assist Italy and Greece. Forty thousand Syrian and Eritrean people in need of international protection were to be resettled from Italy and Greece to the other Member States based on a distribution key. Furthermore, 20,000 people from outside the EU should be resettled over two years. The Commission presented: an action plan against migrant smuggling; guidelines on fingerprinting; and a public consultation on the future of the Blue Card Directive. The Blue Card Directive was a scheme which aimed to make it easier for highly skilled people to come and work in the EU, but it was scarcely used. These new proposals put The Commission on a collision course with several Member States, including the UK and Hungary (The Council 2015a; Euractiv 2015c; The Commission 2015; Euractiv 2015d).

The 16th of June, the Council came together to discuss the different aspects of the European Agenda on Migration. The Member States agreed that they needed to provide support to those frontline Member States who were facing the greatest migratory pressure, however, an agreement that could be implemented in practice was not reached. Tensions rose because France refused entry to hundreds of African migrants at the border town of Ventimiglia. Moreover, Hungary started closing off its border with by building a four-meter high fence. The 22nd of June, Federica Mogherini, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission, launched the first phase of the military operation EUNAVFOR Med with the aim of surveillance and assessment of human smuggling and trafficking networks (The Council 2015b; Euractiv 2015e; Reuters 2015).

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The 23rd of June, Hungary suspended EU asylum laws requiring it to take back refugees who had travelled through Hungary to other countries. The Hungarian government stated that its asylum system was overburdened because so far more than 60,000 migrants had crossed into Hungary irregularly. Suspending the Dublin Regulation affected countries neighbouring Hungary, such as Austria. Austria itself had also stopped processing asylum requests in an effort to pressure other EU countries to do more to help absorb the waves of refugees pouring into the continent. The 25th and 26th of June, the Council came together again to discuss the Commission’s agenda on migration. The EU leaders agreed on a series of measures covering migration. Firstly, the temporary and exceptional relocation of 40,000 persons in clear need of international protection, in which all the Member States would participate, excluding the UK, Ireland, and Denmark. A rapid adoption by the Council of a decision on the distribution of these people had to be taken by the end of July. Secondly, an agreement on resettling 20,000 displaced persons from outside the EU. Thirdly, effective return, readmission, and reintegration policies for those not qualifying for protection should be negotiated. These played an essential part to combat illegal migration and help discourage people from risking their lives. Finally, cooperation with African countries should be intensified and the European Agenda on Security should be furthered (Reuters 2015a; EUCO 22/15).

The 6th of July, the Council lessened Hungary and Bulgaria’s migrant obligations. Georges Károlyi, the Hungarian ambassador to France, said: “The migrants that arrive in Hungary have almost all come through Greece, but Hungary is the first place they are registered, so the other states send them back here. Now we refuse to accept them.” The diplomat added that the Dublin III regulation was never designed to cope with such high numbers of migrants. The 7th of July, Amnesty International stated that an increasing number of refugees and migrants were traveling through the Western Balkans to the EU in search of safety and protection. However, the Balkans route was far from safe, and migrants and refugees who attempted to seek asylum in Serbia or Macedonia faced severe obstacles. Refugees had to face violence and indifference from the authorities, adding to their hardship. Amnesty International, thus, called for safe and regular routes into Europe, and for the respect and protection of refugees’ and migrants’ rights (Euractiv 2015f; Amnesty International 2015).

The 20th of July, the Justice and Home Affairs Council agreed on a draft decision establishing a temporary and exceptional relocation mechanism from Italy and Greece to the other Member States of persons in clear need of international protection. A decision was made that 22,504 displaced persons were to be resettled. The Council also agreed on the designation of certain third countries as safe countries of origin within the meaning of the Asylum Procedures Directive. Safe third countries of origin should be strengthened in line with the Commission’s Agenda of Migration. The Council also adopted a note inviting the EU Member States to follow the Commission guidance on the

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implementation of the Eurodac Regulation as regards to the obligation to take fingerprints of asylum seekers and irregular migrants (EUR 70/1579/2015; The Council 2015c).

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2.3 Suspension of Dublin regulations

The 4th of August, Bulgaria began finishing off a razor-wire fence along its border with Turkey to stop migrants and refugees from entering the country irregularly. It was the final portion of the fence, which began construction in November 2013 and would completely seal the border. The 5th of August, a boat carrying migrants capsized in the Mediterranean off the coast of Libya. An Irish vessel patrolling the Mediterranean rescued 400 migrants. The Italian coastguard recovered 25 bodies, whilst it was unclear how many people were missing. The 15th of August, at least 40 migrants died in the hold of an overcrowded boat off the coast of Libya. They were killed by fumes from the engine, 320 others were rescued by the Italian navy (The Independent 2015; BBC News 2015; BBC News 2015a).

The 19th of August, Greece appealed to the other Member States to come up with a comprehensive strategy to deal with the growing number of migrants landing on its shores. The EU’s relocation initiative was dwarfed by the reality of the number of migrants landing on the Greek shores. In only one week 21,000 migrants landed on Greek shores. Meanwhile, Macedonia decided to seal its southern border with Greece and declared a state of emergency to help cope with its influx of migrants, as the numbers that tried to enter Macedonia rose to more than 3,000 a day. UNHCR said more than 7,000 people, including women and children, had reached Serbia from Macedonia. Many had spent three days on Greece’s northern border after Macedonia refused to allow them to enter. Macedonian police used tear gas stun grenades to beat back refugees. The 25th of August, another incident took place off the coast of Libya. Around 50 migrants died of asphyxiation in the hold of an overcrowded boat, about 430 others were rescued by a Swedish vessel patrolling the Mediterranean (Euractiv 2015i; BBC News 2015b; BBC News 2015c).

The 24th of August, Germany decided to suspend the Dublin regulations for Syrian refugees. The change in German asylum policy made large numbers of refugees move towards Germany. Merkel and Hollande met in Berlin after the violent Macedonian response to prevent migrants from travelling through their country. Merkel threatened to reintroduce national border controls unless other countries would also contribute and share the refugee burden more equally. Meanwhile, refugees continued to try to reach Hungary crossing its border fence that was not yet finished. Hungary called on the EU for more money to handle the rising number of migrants, as a new wave hit its southern border and further exposed the cracks in EU migration policy. The 31st of August, Austria decided to toughen controls along its eastern borders after 71 dead migrants were discovered in a truck. Trainloads of migrants arrived in Austria and Germany from Hungary as the EU asylum rules collapsed under the strain of a wave of unprecedented EU-directed migration. Officials let migrants pass the borders without enforcing the Dublin regulations. Migration and Home Affairs Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos stated that

The EU-Turkey statement - A threat to the legitimacy of the EU?

Table of contents

List of Figures

Introduction

1.

Literature Review

1.1

Citizenship and Security

1.2

Governmentality of external border management

1.3

Critical security studies in an EU-context

1.4

Governmentality of EU external border management

1.5

Off-shoring and out-sourcing the EU’s external border management

2.

Developments up until the EU-Turkey statement

Legal and political overview of EU migration and border policies until 2014

Year

Policy and agreements

Brief description

2.1

Geopolitical developments lead to rising refugee numbers

2.2

The European ‘refugee crisis’, Schengen under pressure

2.3

Suspension of Dublin regulations