European migration governance since the Lisbon treaty: introduction to the special issue

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The proposal for this Special Issue was accepted by the previous Editorial team. Since the Guest Editor subsequently became Deputy Editor of JEMS, the review process has been conducted by the Editor-in-Chief, applying the same procedures used for all Special Issues, including external review.

2. Since writing this, and at the time of going to press (early September 2015), there are signs that a renewed push for European cooperation is unfolding as a result of the refugee crisis. In the face of unprecedented refugee movements, especially from Syria, the Commission has proposed a mandatory distribution plan for 160,000 refugees as well as a wider overhaul of European asylum policy. The governments of most member states, including France and Germany, have stated they support the plan. The proposal is due to be discussed at an extraordinary meeting of the Home Affairs Council on 14 September. Assuming the refugee distribution system comes into force it will represent a major policy shift. It is too early, however, to tell whether the crisis will generate fundamentally new European policy-making dynamics to the ones discussed in this Introduction.

3. Schengen is not contiguous with EU membership: of the 26 countries who are in Schengen, 22 are EU member states, while four—Iceland, Lichtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland—are not; and of the six EU member states that are outside of Schengen, two have opted out—UK and Ireland—while four—Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, and Romania—are awaiting admission.

4. M.S.S. v. Belgium and Greece, Application No. 30696/09, Merits, 21 January 2011.

5. The consultation and responses may be found at http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-is-new/public-consultation/2012/consulting_0023_en.htm

6. Since 1999, policies for the AFSJ have been developed through five-year programmes, named after the city in which they were agreed: Tampere (1999–2004), Hague (2005–2009), and Stockholm (2010–2014).

7. In a bid to cut costs—and to be seen to be cutting costs—European Council meetings will now take place in Brussels rather than in different European cities as before.

8. The vast majority of the estimated nine million people who have fled their homes in Syria are either internally displaced or living as refugees in neighbouring countries, principally Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq. The relatively small number (approximately 150,000) who have claimed asylum in Europe has nevertheless prompted concern among European Governments of a new asylum crisis.

9. My calculations using Eurostat data available at http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/submitViewTableAction.do

10. Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions v. France, Complaint No. 63/2010. http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/socialcharter/Complaints/CC63Merits_en.pdf

11. See http://frontex.europa.eu/about-frontex/governance-documents/2015