Assessing Supranational Leadership in the Refugee Crisis: The European Commission as a Policy Entrepreneur in Migration and Asylum Policy

In a short amount of time a series of proposals was launched and adopted on the EU level in response to the refugee crisis. These reforms are significant and far-reaching, in some instances unprecedented in comparison to other policy areas. This article takes the case of migration and asylum policy reform to assess the European Commission’s policy entrepreneurship (leadership) in the context of New Intergovernmentalism, which applies to highly politicized policy areas. The article is based on 16 semi-structured interviews with EU officials, and an analysis of relevant primary and secondary literature.