2018 Volume 2018 Issue 190 Pages 190_17-190_32
Since 2015, we have seen the EU facing a refugee crisis, and very complex EU common immigration policies might be collapsed now. However, each member state still manages to control migration flow by making policies at the EU level and establishing bilateral agreements with the third countries. In other words, in Europe, we can see complex and multi-layered migration governance which is composed of three actors: EU member states—EU—third countries.
This article examines the nature of this multi-layered migration governance that appeares after the mid 2000s by analyzing the function of each institution (for example, EU readmission agreement, EU mobility partnership, and French bilateral agreement) and each actor’s preference. This article analyzes the relationship between France as a member state and Senegal, Cap Vert, and Tunisia as the third counties which have established international agreements on migration issues with France and the EU.
I reach three conclusions as follows. Firstly, I confirm that EU common external migration policies and French bilateral agreements have similar contents such as issue linkage between irregular migration policy and development aid or visa facilitation. Moreover, I show the intention of the EU to replicate the strategy of existing French bilateral agreements in their partnerships. Then, I identify the relation between EU-level policies and French bilateral agreements not as mutually exclusive but as a complementary one.
Secondly, the preference of each actor is identified as follows. The EU has a strong motivation to accomplish the coherence among policies of EU member states on the control of migration flows by including other actors in their policy framework and making EU return directives. However, France and the third countries make their political decisions strongly based on the cost-benefit calculation. They pursue the discretion to implement restrictive or beneficial rules which put priority on their interests. Therefore, the EU has not accomplished the consistency in their external migration policies.
Thirdly, even though the preferences of member states and the third countries, the EU has increasingly made more success in concluding new Mobility Partnership and EU readmission agreements than before. The key elements that lead this progress are to compromise the strategies of member states and to establish the funds to support the third countries’ development to offer the incentive to participate in the EU migration framework. Therefore, we can still see the EU’s resilience in the external dimension of migration policy area.
