Uncertainties at the European Union's southern borders: actors, policies, and legal frameworks

Abstract

A multiplicity of legal and political arrangements regulate the European Union's external borders. With borders representing the intersection between national and international law and politics, the EU also acquired some legal competences in this realm. The resulting triple set of rules coincides with the growing disaggregation of the classical functions of borders. This state of affairs generates legal and procedural uncertainties and results in a growing ambiguity and lack of transparency, in terms of competences and accountability. Due to the EU's concerns with transnational terrorism, and the growing securitization of migration, the EU's borders with the states of the Middle East and North Africa are particularly relevant in this regard, with the resulting uncertainties touching upon fundamental rights. This article discusses the conceptual starting point of the growing institutional, legal, and political complexity at the EU's southern borders, together with relevant aspects and developments, thus also providing the background to the different contributions in this special issue.

Keywords:

• borders
• European foreign policy
• ENP
• EU-Middle East relations
• EU-MENA relations

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all the participants at the workshop “Uncertainty at the EU’s Southern Borders: Actors, Policies and Legal Frameworks”, held at the European University Institute on 29–30 November 2012. The authors would also like to thank Stefania Panebianco and Sarah Wolff for their extremely useful comments on previous versions of this special issue. Special thanks to Jessica Ayesha Northey for research assistance and language editing. The usual disclaimers apply.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Raffaella Del Sarto is Part-time Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (European University Institute), San Domenico di Fiesole and directs the research project on “BORDERLANDS: Boundaries, Governance, and Power in the European Union's Relations with North Africa and the Middle East” funded by the European Research Council (ERC). She is also Adjunct Professor of Middle East Studies and International Relations at the Paul H. Nitze School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Bologna Center, Johns Hopkins University.

Chiara Steindler is Research Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (European University Institute), San Domenico di Fiesole. She works for the BORDERLANDS Project,funded by the European Research Council (ERC).

Notes

1. For a more detailed discussion of this issue, see Del Sarto (2010).

2. See for example the database and interactive maps at http://borderlands-project.eu/DataMaps/Index.aspx.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the BORDERLANDS Project, funded by the European Research Council [grant number 263277]. The project is directed by Raffaella A. Del Sarto and hosted at the European University Institute, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, Florence.