EU Migration Governance in the Mediterranean Region: The promise of (a balanced) partnership?

Abstract

A year after the Arab Spring, EU migration policies towards its Southern Mediterranean neighbours are at a crossroads. The revolutions in Arab countries saliently disclosed the nature of the regimes – long criticised by foreign policy experts – with whom the EU and its Member States had been cooperating for years in an effort to stem migration flows from the South. Notwithstanding the rhetoric of a “global approach” to migration that the EU officially endorsed as early as 2005, cooperation under the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) has clearly concentrated on the aspect of migration control and has consisted in the gradual involvement of Eastern European and Southern Mediterranean neighbours in securing the EU’s external borders.