Global Visions, Regional Realities: EU Migration and Asylum Policy in light of the UN Compacts on Migration and Refugees

Abstract

This thesis examines the development of the European Union’s migration and asylum policy post-2018, focusing on its alignment and misalignment with the United Nation’s Global Compacts on Migration and Refugees. It explores how EU migration policy have evolved in response to these international frameworks and scrutinizes the extent EU policies in both the internal (relocation policy) and external (third country agreements) dimension align or misalign with the Compacts’ principles of non-discrimination, responsibility sharing and non-regression. Employing a comparative case study approach, the thesis uses document analysis of secondary sources and EU legislative texts, proposals, opinions, and press releases spanning from 2018 to 2023, to compare the development of alignment across time and the two cases. Building on previous research and concepts from liberal intergovernmentalism, such as venue-shopping, failing forward, organized hypocrisy and norm robustness, the thesis elaborates an analytical framework based on the transformative perspective to analyze the development of EU migration policy by exploring the cultural, environmental, and structural factors which could have affected the development. The nuances in the research design and the analytical framework allows for a comprehensive analysis of a much-researched field, but one that has lacked a comprehensive approach capturing the intricate dynamics of EU policy development, and a comparative dimension across different EU policy dimensions.

The findings indicate an increasing misalignment between EU migration and asylum and the Compacts after the introduction of the New Pact, across both dimensions. This divergence is exacerbated by a persistent “organized hypocrisy” between the EU’s normative proclamations and practical implementation. The development is explained by external events lowering the cultural threshold for reform, where cultural changes in Member States and EU institutions allows for a more security-oriented and misaligned policy development undermining international solidarity and potentially compromising the rights of migrants and refugees. This analysis contributes to a deeper understanding of the dynamics and complexities which shape EU migration policy and offers insight into challenges of aligning regional policies with global standards amidst different Member States’ interests and external incidents and crises.