The European Commission’s role in EU–Turkey migration: political leadership through strategic framing

Abstract

This article presents an ideational perspective of new institutional leadership and applies it to the European Commission’s role in the policy process concerning the European Union (EU)-Turkey cooperation on migration from 2014 to 2016. On a conceptual and methodological level, through searching for evidence of the causal mechanism of ‘strategic framing’, the article traces how the Commission deployed its ideas in the different phases of the policy-making process. This contribution feeds into the claim for new institutional leadership by revealing how such ideas shaped some of the main policy outcomes in the EU–Turkey cooperation during the refugee crisis. The ideational perspective of new institutional leadership also suggests that the Juncker Commission’s ‘strategic framing’ was part of the EU’s broader principled realism philosophy that led the Commission to take some contestable political choices.

Keywords:

• European Commission
• new institutional leadership
• strategic framing
• Turkey
• migration

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the officials of the European Commission, the European External Action Service, the Council Secretariat, the MEPs, and the former ambassadors and diplomats of Turkey and of the member states that were interviewed for this project. We are also grateful to the editors and the three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments, and to Professor Lucia Quaglia for her suggestions on an early draft of this article.

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 Its physical presence at all legislative stages, the perception of it as a (near) neutral facilitator, and its command of expert and technical information.

2 This definition focuses on three main constitutive elements of political leadership, namely: (1) the focus on ‘persons’ with ‘motives and values’ and ‘resources’; (2) a ‘reciprocal process’ between ‘leaders and followers’ and (3) the ‘process of mobilising … in order to realise goals’.

3 Indeed, most studies have focused on the intergovernmental nature of the process (see, for example, Batalla Adam 2017; Turhan and Wessels 2021; Webber 2019: ch. 5) and/or on the consequences of the deal with Turkey for the EU’s foreign policy identity and legal order (see, for example, Fernandez Arribas 2016; Gürkan and Coman 2021; Poon 2016; Wessel 2021: 79).

4 At the time of the High Representative/Vice President (HR/VP) Catherine Ashton, there was only one Special Advisor on Turkey. It was HR/VP Federica Mogherini who established, in the beginning of 2015, a specific division on Turkey with only five officials (Interviews 2 and 23).

5 According to Juncker, never in the last 15 years had the Commission worked so closely with the German Chancellor as it did with the JAP and first political statement (Webber 2019: 167).

6 At that time, the Netherlands was holding the Presidency of the Council.

7 The founding chairman of a Berlin-based think tank.

Additional information

Funding

This work is part of a research project that was supported by the Italian Ministry of Education under Grant FABR.

Notes on contributors

Elena Baracani

Elena Baracani is Associate Professor in Political Science at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Bologna. Her research focuses on EU foreign policy and external relations. Her most recent book is EU–Turkey Relations (Edward Elgar 2021). [[email protected]]

Virginia Sarotto

Virginia Sarotto is Research Assistant at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Bologna. [[email protected]]