Breaking the Legal Link but not the Law: Externalisation through Orchestration in the Context of the Migration Crisis

This article sheds light on ‘orchestration’ as an under-studied mode of external EU-governance. It argues that relying on indirect governance through intermediaries not only allows the EU to pursue its external governance objectives more effectively and at lower costs, but that ‘orchestration’ may also serve as a strategy to outsource legal responsibility. Empirically, the article illustrates how orchestration is used by the EU in the case of border management in the Mediterranean to pursue the two-fold strategy of stopping the arrival of migrants on European territory, whilst simultaneously portraying itself as acting consistent with pertinent international and EU law. Breaking down the orchestration process in the three basic elements of ‘outsourcing’, ‘enabling’, and ‘counteracting’, we show how the EU has engaged with Libyan coast guard and the NGOs to promote its governance objectives through intermediaries. Whereas NGO’s played an important role in the EU’s initial approach that centered at saving lives at sea, the EU has progressively shifted to a ‘push-back’ policy that seeks to bolster the Libyan coast guard as central intermediary. At the same time, humanitarian NGOs have increasingly become subject to counteracting measures by EU frontline states such as Italy and Malta in an effort to exclude them from EU border governance.