Pointing Fingers: The Attribution of Political Responsibility for EU Migration Policies in the European Public

Dying refugees in the Mediterranean sea and overloaded reception camps for refugees have filled the headlines in European newspapers. But who is publicly made responsible for the EU-policies which were unable to prevent this human tragedy? Does the public blame the member states or supranational actors? Or does the public refrain from responsibility attributions in the face of complex EU policy making procedures? Further specifying the conjectures of recent literature on the attribution of responsibility for EU policies, we argue that in complex policy-making structures responsibility for contested policies is usually attributed to implementing actors; only if the respective policy does not require active implementation, we expect political responsibility to diffuse. To test these expectations we analyze public responsibility attributions in the European quality press with regard to three contested migration policies: (1) EU's border control policies, (2) the so called "Dublin"-system and (3) the principle "freedom of movement of persons". In line with our expectations the analysis shows that: (1) responsibility for EU border controls is attributed to the EU, (2) responsibility for the unfair distribution of refugees according to the Dublin rules is attributed to EU member states, (3) responsibility attributions for unwanted social migration facilitated by the principle of "freedom of movement of persons" within Europe are untargeted and thus diffuse. The paper thus highlights a severe accountability gap for policies that do not require active implementation.