Kickstart or distraction? Addressing the ‘external dimension’ in European Asylum & Migration reform

The EU has witnessed noteworthy policy inertia in reforming the Common European Asylum System despite a supposed migration/refugee crisis. To address this dynamic, the Commission launched the New Pact in 2020 – but to no avail yet. Divergent preferences on balancing responsibility and solidarity are seen as preventing negotiation progress. The recent Council focus on an ‘external dimension’ of migration/refugee policy is seen as an exception to this rule. However, when reforms progress in some areas, how have circumstances changed from just the ‘regular’ crisis pressure that was not a sufficient catalyst before? And to what extent are side-tracks besides core negotiations conducive to overhauling the system at large? So what has brought about this focus on an external dimension? On the one hand, the recent French rotational presidency of the Council has tried to use this ‘dimension’ for kickstarting negotiations, posing it as a third priority and equating it with responsibility and solidarity. On the other hand, two external shocks took place: the advent of the Ukraine War and subsequent triggering of the Temporary Protection Directive, and the so-called ‘instrumentalisation of migration’ by Belarus. Arguably, these two events have dragged Eastern member states – ‘fence-sitters no more’ (Zaun 2020) – into the mainstream of the negotiations. Preliminary fieldwork shows both Council and EP feel the pressure to enact meaningful reform – so at least part of the Pact – within the current Parliamentary mandate. On the other hand, several rapporteurs on key files also explicitly link fundamental rights and progress on the whole Pact to progress on subfiles – some of which are at the core of the ‘external dimension’. Solely focussing on the external dimension, without reforming Dublin, would therefore encounter strong opposition from the EP. Using (Embedded) Process Tracing, this paper seeks to understand the role of this supposed ‘external dimension’ in reforming the EU policy sphere in asylum and migration. Specifically, this paper tracks the role of the relevant elements on the ‘external dimension’ and their relation with the overarching Pact negotiations, at both the EP and at the Council sides. The core intention of the paper is to contribute to understanding why, despite crisis pressure, little substantive (or symbolic) progress has been made in reforms addressing that very crisis. So how does this ‘external dimension’ work, what is on the table and is it really a ‘dimension’? There are four main elements in using the external dimension to reboot the negotiations: a) informal mechanisms such as the MOCADEM forum and the use of visa policy and NDICI funds to stimulate returns cooperation; b) the external focus in the agenda-setting by the French presidency of the Council; c) restarting negotiations on the Returns directive (non-Pact; stalled since 2020); and d) new (non-Pact) legislation to address instrumentalisation of migration.