Suchergebnisse

The approach of the European Union external border has been made on the one hand through an analysis of the concepts of external border from the point of view of official documents and the concepts introduced by authors and specialists in the field; on the other hand, it has been made through an attempt to seize certain types of symbolic and ideological borders.
As far as the first category is concerned, resorting to documents and legal regulations of European institutions has been highly important. We have also paid attention to conceptual approaches on the border, as well as on the relations "open – close", "inclusive – exclusive", or "soft – hard" border.
For a long time, the concept of border has developed as an "intolerance axis" of nationalism and racism, of neighbours' rejection. Beyond physical border, irrespective of the analysed conceptual approach, either within or outside the European Union border, we identify other types of "borders". We consider these borders as symbolic and ideological considering that, more often than not, they are not palpable. From Europeanism to nationalism, from ethno-religious identities to social chasms, the wide range of approaches on symbolic and ideological borders may continue in the context of a new fight against terrorism or of the implementation of an effective European neighbourhood policy. The physical border at the external limit of the European Union may "open" in time. Yet other types of borders may exist between people and communities. For instance, immigrants live within the European Union; by preserving their identity, they can create a world that "refuses integration" due to the particularities they develop. Thus, we can identify a split that may take the form of a symbolic cultural border sometimes even turning into an "external" border.
The wide range of epistemological concepts on the European Union external border can continue by analysing other typed of approaches. Beyond the great conceptual diversity, there is a clear-cut difference between the official border with different degrees of openness for non-community citizens and borders actually separating people despite the fact that they are not physical. Even if it has a political, economic, social, cultural, mental, religious, or ethnical support, the border is a space separating people and territories. From another perspective, "the border is identified to a contact area where social, economic, and cultural particularities of two countries intertwine".
The main conclusion of an investigation on concepts of external border is that the European Union has an external border that can be both stiff and flexible depending on the realities and challenges of the moment, on tensions or social and economic, political and legal openness, as well as on the complex internal reality of the European Union Member States.

Large numbers of incoming refugees since 2015 were perceived as a major challenge for European cooperation and migratory regimes and the situation has within Europe soon been seen as a crisis. Since then, European states and the European Union (EU) have intensified measures to shut down migrant routes to Europe as well as their attempts to externalise means of protection of refugees in Africa. Based on a theoretical framework consisting of political science border studies, postcolonial studies and the method of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) together with the study of narratives in politics, this thesis analyses two critical events in this field, the 2015 Valletta Summit on migration where European and African leaders discussed the terms of migration cooperation and the 2018 debate on disembarkation platforms. The focus in this work lies especially on neocolonial elements in the power relations between Europe and Africa and how these are expressed in the narratives that were used to justify and explain the action taken. For this purpose, official documents, speeches, interviews and additional utterances from European heads of states and European politicians as well as from African heads of states and African Union (AU) representatives are analysed. Eventually, the thesis comes to the conclusion that aform of neocolonial exists that is here named implicit or indirect neocolonialism.

This article discusses changes in the discourse and practice of the EU external border. Findings of a small-scale research project looking at UNHCR'S Border Management and Protection of Refugees (BMPR) programme will discuss developments taking place at the EU external border and will show a new kind of narrative. Institutional cooperation, access to territory and compliance with the principle of non-refoulement seem to have improved. A more empathetic narrative of border security has found its way into institutions of enforcement authorities that primarily follow their mandate of protecting the state's border and territory. This new narrative is, however, highly politicized and institutionally driven. By taking a more critical view, I introduce the concept of humane refoulement towards the end of the article describing the consequences of this new narrative and denoting it as hypocritical in its nature.

AbstractDespite an increased level of legalization of JHA, academic literature has paid little attention to the role of law in this field. It is the objective of this article to assess the EU's attempt to reconcile its current practices of extraterritorial border control coordinated by Frontex in the Mediterranean with international human rights law, notably the principle of non‐refoulement. By drawing on insights on both rationalist and constructivist accounts, we argue that international human rights principles such as non‐refoulement are usually broad enough for everyone to identify and agree with and to provide state actors sufficient leeway to interpret the rules according to their interest. However, thanks to the activities of numerous inter‐, supra‐, and transnational actors offering various and competing legal interpretations, EU member states feel compelled to react by triggering several rounds of rule‐specification that have the power to clarify pertinent law and strengthen fundamental rights standards.

The removal of internal border controls across most of the European Union (EU) has increased interdependencies between the Member States, triggering the emergence of many different EU common goods. In the fields of external border controls, asylum and migration, Article 80 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) implicitly recognizes the existence of such common goods and the challenges related to their effective provision, by establishing solidarity and fair sharing of responsibility between the Member States as the governing principle for relevant common policies. An analysis of negotiations on the EU´s Multiannual Financial Frameworks since 1993 and of data on budgetary implementation since 2000 shows that pooling of financial resources at EU level and the establishment of common structures have advanced slowly, despite efforts from the European Parliament and the European Commission to increase momentum. Both specific features of the EU budgetary provisions and institutional characteristics of these sensitive policy areas have contributed to the slow progress. Against this backdrop, the 2015-2016 surge in arrivals of asylum-seekers has led to an emergency-driven increase in joint financial efforts, which nevertheless remain limited as compared to national expenditure in the policy areas. Scattered data suggest that the latter is unevenly distributed across the Union. These questions acquire renewed salience in the context of the negotiations on the post-2020 Multiannual Financial Framework. While pooling of financial resources at EU level cannot alone ensure fair sharing of responsibility, a series of possible developments in this domain have the potential to strengthen the contribution of the EU budget to the application of the principle that governs the common policies on external borders, asylum and migration according to the Treaty of Lisbon.