Today, EU member states manage great parts of the cross-border mobility of third country nationals together. This especially applies to asylum seekers and illegal immigrants who try to reach and cross the external borders of the EU without valid passports and visas. Member states participate in a number of joint actions which most often involve an intervention into migrants’ mobility already beyond the EU external borders. In the countries of origin and transit as well as on the Mediterranean Sea member states act in concert. Territorial access to the EU macro territory is controlled for via joint operations of FRONTEX on sea, land, or air, via common readmission agreements with sending countries or via the introduction of the Schengen visa procedure. Nevertheless, policy makers on the national level do not frame these actions as their own decisions. A qualitative content analysis of expert interviews in two EU Member States, namely Austria and Finland, who both are currently not challenged by major refugee flows, reveals that common EU decisions are often framed either as a (legal) constraint to national policy interests or as an excuse for controversial policies. This especially true for control policies for which member states share responsibility and which are conducted beyond the territory of these countries. The proposed paper will argue that the EU policy level together with the exterritorialization of border control provide national policy makers with a line of argumentation which allows for a diffusion of responsibility.
