Border Management in the Mediterranean

Abstract

Border management policies in the Mediterranean1 are the result of Member states’ and EU initiatives, hence reflecting the schizophrenic nature of a policy caught between an inherently sovereignty-related field of action and an increasingly communautarized issue. The development of Mediterranean border management at the EU level is directly related to the reality of irregular migrants risking their lives on makeshift boats, cayocas and pateras, to come and live the ‘European dream’. The EU, confronted with the arrival of those migrants and their deaths on the Spanish tourist beaches or on Maltese tuna nets, is striving to find a collective solution to common problems. However, as this chapter demonstrates, while all EU Member states agree on tackling this issue, only a minority of them are willing to espouse the concepts of ‘burden-sharing’ and ‘solidarity’. The creation of Frontex, in 2004, acutely revealed the gap between Member states’ preferences and the difficulties encountered in developing a Mediterranean dimension to border management. In the light of the arrival of more than 20,000 Tunisian migrants in Italy between January and April 2011, and the Franco-Italian row over the deliverance of short-term residence permits to those migrants, who came mainly for economic reasons, a rational-choice historical institutionalist interpretation is again highly relevant.