Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Uluslararası Göç Sempozyumu Göç: Mevcut Durum, İzmir, Türkiye, 3 - 04 Nisan 2024, ss.42
The EU has been in a continuous wave of crises such as the Constitutional Treaty crisis, the
Eurozone crisis, the rise of populism, the migration crisis, Brexit, and Covid-19 since the mid2000s. The efforts to cope with these multi-faceted crises decreased the EU’s ability to act as a
superior authority over its member states. The EU’s declining superiority brought along with
differentiated integration models which are unable to be explained by the first and second waves
of European integration theories. To fill this gap in the literature, postfunctionalism has been
currently emerging as a grand theory which shows that particularly the main assumptions of
functionalism, intergovernmentalism, and constructivism are unable to explain today’s politicized
EU decision-making procedures. Instead of spill-over effect, interest-group-based bargaining
mechanisms, and social learning processes, the theory argues that regional integration has been
directly related to the mass politics of states. Leuffen, Rittberger, and Schimmelfennig (2022)
argue that politicized areas in the EU are migration, welfare systems, and defense policy which
constitute the core sovereign fields of nation-states. Accordingly, migration as being a key
disputed field within EU member states has evolved as a politicized foreign policy instrument of
the Union since 2015. Although the EU Council finally reached an agreement on the “Asylum
and Migration Management Regulation and Asylum Procedures Regulation” on 8 June 2023, this
flexible system still transfers the burden mainly to the EU’s border and non-member states.
In this framework, this paper aims to shed light on the EU’s migration policy instruments
managed in collaboration with the non-member states. The cases will be limited to Libya, Egypt,
and Tunisia as the main collaborators in the Southern Mediterranean partnership of the EU’s
migration management system since 2019 when the first draft of the Regulation was proposed.
The analytical framework of this paper is based on the main assumptions of postfunctionalism
which underline the EU’s failure to act in solidarity with its member states in politicized fields. In
analyzing the selected cases, the EU’s official documents on migration management constituting
a part of the EU acquis communitaire and bilateral agreements with these Southern
Mediterranean countries will be chosen as primary sources. To keep the study updated, media
sources on the EU’s migration policy will be reviewed and other related secondary sources in the
literature will be included in the analysis section. This study finally attempts to contribute to the
existing literature by applying an emerging theory to a crisis field that has remained dynamic for
many years.
Keywords: EU Migration Policy, postfunctionalism, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, politicization