The present paper presents the preliminary findings of a research study of the EU response to the crisis that emerged in Europe in 2011 because of the growth of the number of irregular migrants. The first section deals with the root causes of the crisis in general terms and explains why many European citizens and political leaders are hostile to the arrival of migrants most of whom are forced migrants. The second section introduces the analytical framework of transboundary crisis management that is applied in the third section to analysing the management of the migration crisis by the leaders of the EU. In the concluding section, the preliminary results of the analysis are presented and the effectiveness of the EU management of the crisis is assessed.
