The external dimensions of EU migration and asylum policies in times of crisis

Abstract

This edited volume has been conceived in the framework of the Jean Monnet Chair in EU External Action at the University of Salamanca awarded to Professor Juan Santos Vara in 2016 (574677-EPP-1–2016–1-ES-EPPJMO -CHAIR). It is based on further reflection and discussion on the works presented at the workshop on ‘The External Dimensions of EU Migration Policies: Effectiveness, Fairness and Rule of Law Reconsidered’, held in Salamanca on the 19 and 20 October 2017 in cooperation with the Centre of European Policy Studies (CEPS). It also benefited from the support of the Office of the Eighth Centenary of the University of Salamanca. The emergence of the European refugee humanitarian crisis in 2015 brought once more to the spotlight the foundations of EU cooperation in the domains of migration management and asylum. The increase in the number of entries by asylum seekers provoked a political and legitimation crisis in the Union. A crisis which, despite having its deepest roots in the incapacity or lack of political willingness by many EU Member States to secure solidarity-based responses and safe reception conditions for those seeking international protection, hit back at the EU and its added value in these policy domains as a whole. The fact that political crises are often utilised, instrumentalised and even co-created by political and security actors to pursue their own interests and agendas has not passed unnoticed by the literature. ‘Crisis labelling’ has constituted a recurrent practice by policy makers. It has not only enabled ‘new patterns of action’, but also justified the continuation of ‘established