Externalisation as a depoliticising strategy: why the Visegrád Group participates in the EU’s external migration policy

Poland, the Czech-Republic, Slovakia and Hungary (the V4) have in common that they have low immigration numbers and thus have little interest in contributing to common European solutions in asylum and migration policies. Even so, the V4 has cooperated in the EU’s external migration governance. In particular, the V4 have contributed with significant funds towards the EU Emergency Trust Fund aimed at limiting migration from Africa, even though they experience little to no immigration from this region. However, their reasons for doing so have received little scholarly attention. If the V4 care so little about limiting asylum-seeker numbers in Europe, why would they contribute substantial funding to external migration policy? This paper builds the argument that while the V4 governments do not care about solving conflicts around the issue of migration, they do have an interest in showing a general readiness to cooperate to their European allies. Cooperating in the external dimension of EU migration policies is a way to limit reputational damage resulting from uncompromising positions in the internal dimension of EU migration policies. The focus on external dimension policies can be explained by the fact that these are less politicised among voters than internal policies. Hence a focus on this dimension allows the V4 to please European partners while simultaneously avoiding domestic blow-back that cooperation on the internal dimension would entail.