The European Union and illegal migration in the southern Mediterranean: The trap of competing policy concepts

International Journal of Human Rights

Volumn 15, Issue 6, 2011, Pages 813-826

  Demmelhuber, Thomas ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ERLANGEN NUREMBERG   (Germany)

Author keywords

Externalisation of EU policies; FRONTEX; Illegal migration; International law

Indexed keywords

EID: 84859196990     PISSN: 13642987     EISSN: 1744053X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13642987.2011.570732     Document Type: Article

References (68)

1. Though strictly speaking Mauritania is not a Mediterranean country, the EU incorporates the West African country in its Mediterranean cooperation networks and policy initiatives due to policy fields such as illegal migration or anti-terrorism cooperation. Thus Mauritania is also included in the following analysis.
2. Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave. Democratisation in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993).
3. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992).
4. Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, 'Elections without Democracy', Journal of Democracy 13, no. 2 (2002): 51-65.
5. Daniel Brumberg, 'Democratization in the Arab World? The Trap of Liberalized Autocracy', Journal of Democracy 13, no. 4 (2002): 56-68.
6. Marina Ottaway, Democracy Challenged: The Rise of Semi-Authoritarianism (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2003).
7. Dietrich Jung, ed., Democratization and Development. New Political Strategies for the Middle East (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
8. Thomas Carothers, Critical Mission: Essays on Democracy Promotion (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2004).
9. Thomas Carothers and Marina Ottaway, eds, Uncharted Journey. Promoting Democracy in the Middle East (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005).
10. Yahira H. Zoubir, 'Libya and Europe: Economic Realism at the Rescue of the Qaddafi Authoritarian Regime', Journal of Contemporary European Studies 17, no. 1 (2009): 401-415.
11. For more on this topic, see also: Edward D. Mansfield and Jack L. Snyder, Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005).
12. Michelle Pace, 'Norm Shifting from EMP to ENP: The EU as a Norm Entrepreneur in the South?', Cambridge Review of International Affairs 20, no. 4 (2007): 659-675.
13. Thomas Dem-melhuber, EU-Mittelmeerpolitik und der Reformprozess in Agypten. Von der Partnerschaft zur Nachbarschaft (Baden-Baden: Nomos Publishing House, 2009), 91-94.
14. The options of legal immigration have been diminishing since the establishment of the Schengen Area and subsequent joint EU and national regulations.
15. Associated Press, 'Italian MPs Back Crackdown on Illegal Migrants', The Guardian, May 13, 2009.
16. Estimated costs for the Mediterranean passage amount to approximately €2,000.
17. Philippe Fargues, ed., CARIM Mediterranean Migration 2008-2009 Report (San Domenico di Fiesole: European University Institute, 2009), 472-504.
18. Klaus Heymach and Susanne Sporrer, 'From Somalia to Europe via Yemen', Qantara.de -Dialogue with the Islamic World, November 11, 2005, http://www.qantara.de/webcom/show_article.php/_c-478/_nr-349/i.html/ (accessed 2 October 2009).
19. Yosuf al-Hamadi, 'Saudi Authorities Arrest over 65,000 Illegal Migrants in Three Months', Asharq al-awsat (English edition), 20 July 2009, http://www.aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=1&id=17481/ (accessed 10 August 2009).
20. Philippe Fargues, 'Irregularity as Normality among Immigrants South and East of the Mediterranean', Irregular Migration Series Background Paper, CARIM-AS no. 2 (2009): 3.
21. Ibid., 14.
22. The Dublin Regulation (also known as Dublin II) was adopted in 2003 and replaced the Dublin Convention, signed in 1990. It determines the EU member state responsible to examine an application for asylum seekers. In brief, the Dublin II aims to set 'the criteria and mechanisms for determining the Member State responsible for examining an asylum application lodged in one of the Member States by a third-country national'. (Official Journal of the European Union, Council Regulation (EC) No 343/2003 of 18 February 2003 Establishing the Criteria and Mechanisms for Determining the Member State Responsible for Examining an Asylum Application Lodged in One of the Member States by a Third-country National (Luxembourg, L 50 2003), 1.)
23. Gemma Aubarell and Xavier Aragall, 'Immigration and the Euro-Mediterranean Area: Keys to Policy and Trends', EuroMeSCo Papers, no. 47 (Lisbon: EuroMeSCo Secretariat at the IEEI, 2005).
24. Following the concept of modernisation theory saying that through economic liberalism and subsequent shifts in society a middle class emerges that pushes forward with claims for full political participation. The teleological bias in this theory is obvious and matter of heated debate.
25. The Council of the European Union, A Secure Europe in a Better World - The European Security Strategy (Brussels: The Council of the European Union, 2003).
26. For the term 'semiperiphery', see Andreas Marchetti, 'The European Neighbourhood Policy: Foreign Policy at the EU's Periphery', ZEI Discussion Paper, no. C158 (Bonn: Center for European Integration Studies, 2006), 27.
27. The Treaty of Amsterdam prepared the setting for the transfer of third pillar asylum and immigration policies (Justice and Home Affairs) to the first Europeanised pillar.
28. Each single subcategory of migration would be worth a single study, although in this paper illegal migration plus its external dimension are the main topics of concern. Other aspects of migration are only considered if directly related to EU policy on illegal migration.
29. European Council, Presidency Conclusions, Tampere European Council 15 and 16 October 1999, http://presidency.finland.fi/ (accessed 2 October 2009).
30. Aubarell and Aragall, 'Immigration and the Euro-Mediterranean Area', 47.
31. Sarah Wolff, Nicole Wichmann and Gregory Mounier, 'The External Dimension of Justice and Home Affairs: A Different Security Strategy for the EU?', Journal of European Integration 31, no. 1 (2009): 11.
32. Acronym for the French term 'frontieres exterieures'.
33. Peter Hobbing, 'Integrated Border Management at the EU Level', CEPS Working Documents, no. 227 (Brussels: CEPS, 2005).
34. Sergio Carrera, 'The EU Border Management Strategy. FRONTEX and the Challenges of Irregular Immigration in the Canary Islands', CEPS Working Documents, no. 261 (Brussels: CEPS, 2007), 2-8.
35. Official Journal of the European Union, Regulation (EC) No 562/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006 Establishing a Community Code on the Rules Governing the Movement of Persons across Borders - Schengen Borders Code (Luxembourg, L 105 2006).
36. Official Journal of the European Union, Council Regulation (EC) No 2007/2004 of 26 October 2004 Establishing a European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union (Luxembourg L 349 2004). As shown by Wolff, the years prior to the FRONTEX regulation have already seen sporadic ad hoc missions of some member states (for example Operation Ulysses in the Strait of Gibraltar and around the Canary Islands (January 2003) with France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Portugal, and Spain actively participating plus further countries as observers) in order to tackle massive migration pressures (
37. Sarah Wolff, 'Border Management in the Mediterranean: Internal, External and Ethical Challenges', Cambridge Review of International Affairs 21, no. 2 (2008): 257-258).
38. Official Journal of the European Union (L 105 2004), 2.
39. As an example, the border patrol mission under the code name HERA (phases I-III) since its launching in 2006 - the largest FRONTEX mission so far - aims at combating illegal migration across the external maritime borders of the EU from West African countries to the Canary Islands (FRONTEX, FRONTEX Annual Report 2006 (Warsaw: FRONTEX, 2007), 27).
40. Established in 2004 FRONTEX became operational for land-bound missions in 2005 and launched its first sea-bound mission in 2006 (code name Poseidon. in Greek territorial waters) after conducting risk analysis in 2005 as put forward in Council regulation 2007/ 2004 (FRONTEX, FRONTEX Annual Report 2006, 11).
41. Also known as 'Geneva Refugee Convention'. The 'non-refoulement rule' is a principle in international law (as well as European law) that forbids returning refugees to places where they face inhumane and degrading treatment or where they fear persecution on account of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion (as given in article 33 of the mentioned convention).
42. The 24 nautical miles zone consists of 12 miles in territorial waters with another contiguous zone of up to 12 miles within which a state can exert limited control for the purpose of preventing 'infringement of its customs, fiscal, immigration or sanitary laws and regulations within its territory or territorial sea' (article 33 in United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, UNCLOS).
43. Ruth Weinzierl and Urszula Lisson, Grenzschutz und Menschenrechte. Eine europarechtliche und seerechtliche Studie (Berlin: Deutsches Institut fur Menschenrechte, 2007), 14.
44. Carrera, 'EU Border Management Strategy', 25-27.
45. Human Rights Watch, 'Pushed Back, Pushed Around', September 21, 2009, http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2009/09/21/pushed-back-pushed-around-0/ (accessed 2 October 2009).
46. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 'Conclusion on Protection Safeguards in Interception Measures, 10 October 2003, no. 97 (LIV)', http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/ 3f93b2894.html/ (accessed 2 October 2009).
47. The budget of FRONTEX is the fastest growing budget line in the EU. It started with €6 million Euro in 2005 and increased to over 80 million in 2009 - each year approved by the European Parliament (FRONTEX, FRONTEX Annual Report 2008 (Warsaw: FRONTEX, 2009), 21-6).
48. See article 21 of FRONTEX regulation: '...the Management Board shall be composed of one representative of each Member State and two representatives of the Commission'. (Official Journal of the European Union (L 349 2004), 7.)
49. Carrera, 'EU Border Management Strategy', 13-14.
50. Official Journal of the European Union (L 349 2004), 4.
51. Marie V. Gibert, 'The Securitization of the EU's Development Agenda in Africa: Insights from Guinea-Bissau', Perspectives on European Politics and Society 10, no. 4 (2009): 621-637.
52. Council of the European Union, Press Release, 2609th Council Meeting, General Affairs and External Relations (Luxembourg, 12770/04 [Presse 276] 2004).
53. European Commission, Commissioner Ferrero-Waldner Visits Libya to Reinforce EU-Libya Relations (Brussels, IP/09/227, 2009).
54. 'Libya Gets EU Funds to Combat Illegal Migration', The New York Times, February 10, 2009.
55. Ivan Camilleri, 'Libya Asks EU for $1 bn to Combat Immigration', Times of Malta, May 31, 2009.
56. Zoubir, 'Libya and Europe', 411.
57. Jointly financed by Italy and the EU (Natalino Ronzitti, 'The Treaty of Friendship, Partnership and Cooperation between Italy and Libya: New Prospects for Cooperation in the Mediterranean', Documenti IAI, no. 9 (Rome: Istituto Affari Internazionali, 2009), 6.
58. See also: Zoubir, 'Libya and Europe', 410-412).
59. Ricard Zapata-Barrero and Nynke de Witte, 'The Spanish Governance of EU Borders: Normative Questions', Mediterranean Politics 12, no. 1 (2007): 85-90.
60. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Refugee Protection and International Migration: A Review ofUNHCR'sRole in the Canary Islands (Genf: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2009), 7. Under EU law those bilateral agreements are then sufficient for Spanish border patrols to seek assistance from FRONTEX resources.
61. First termed as such by Raffaela A. del Sarto and Tobias Schumacher, 'From EMP to ENP: What's at Stake with the European Neighbourhood Policy towards the Southern Mediterranean?', European Foreign Affairs Review 10, no. 1 (2005): 17-38.
62. Council of the European Union, Press Release, 2962th Council Meeting, Justice and Home Affairs (Brussels, 13467/09 [Press 271] 2009).
63. According to the rules, illegal immigrants and asylum seekers rescued on the high seas during future FRONTEX missions will be taken to the member state hosting the mission and not to the closest safe port, as was the practice until 2010. Council of the European Union, Council Conclusions on 29 Measures for Reinforcing the Protection of the External Borders and Combating Illegal Immigration, 2998th Justice and Home Affairs Council Meeting (Brussels, 25 and 26 February 2010).
64. Commission of the European Communities, Proposal for a Council Decision supplementing the Schengen Borders Code as regards the surveillance ofthe sea external borders in the context ofthe operational cooperation coordinated by the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders (Brussels, Com. 658 final, 2009).
65. Official Journal of the European Union, Treaty of Lisbon Amending the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty Establishing the European Community, Signed at Lisbon, 13 December 2007 (Brussels, C 306 2007), 13.
66. In the words of a Libyan Brigadier General (interviewed by Human Rights Watch): 'There are no refugees in Libya. They are people who sneak into the country illegally and they cannot be described as refugees. Anyone who enters the country without formal documents and permission is arrested' (Human Rights Watch, 'Pushed Back, Pushed Around', 47-9).
67. Michelle Pace, Liberal and Social Democracy? Aspects of the EU's Democracy Promotion Agenda in the Middle East (Stockholm: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 2009), 14.
68. Paolo Cuttitta, 'Das Mittelmeer als Wohlstandsgrenze', in Grenzsoziologie. Die politische Strukturierung des Raumes, ed. Georg Vobruba and Monika Eigmilller (Wiesbaden: VS Publishing House, 2006), 256.