FOR LABOUR MIGRATION SYSTEMS
12.2 The implementation of Mobility Partnerships: From thinking to doing
The analysis of the MPs with Cape Verde, Morocco and Moldova is based on the ‘scoreboards’ of projects that follow from the MP annexes. Except for the case of Moldova, these are not public documents, but they have been obtained through requests by the authors. To gain an in-depth understanding of the implementation of MPs, it is essential to look at the specific content of the projects being implemented.
The number of projects varies widely from one MP country to another. The difference between the two pilot MPs is quite striking, with 75 completed and 25 ongoing projects for Moldova in comparison with 28 completed and 11 ongoing projects for Cape Verde. The MP with Morocco, which was concluded five years after the pilots, totals 10 completed and 62 ongoing projects.
Thematic trends in implementation
MPs’ project topics are directly linked to the four pillars of the EU’s Global Approach to Migration (and Mobility, as added in 2011) (GAM(M)) and evolve according to existing policy orientations.
The first pillar of the GAMM4 covers mobility, legal migration and
integration. The notion of circular migration has been closely related to the
4 See European Commission, The Global Approach to Migration and Mobility,
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MP tool.5 Chou and Gibert (2012) argue that circular migration is at the heart
of MPs. Circular migration was perceived as “an important shift in migration patterns” for countries of origin (GCIM, 2005, pp. 1, 31). The core of the debate on this issue related to labour and economic migration.6 Circular
migration was considered to be the perfect approach to guarantee a win– win–win situation (ibid., no. 16, p. 66). Ideally, receiving countries that needed workers would have access to foreign labour markets, thus filling their labour shortages thanks to legal labour-migration schemes. It should be noted that EU Member States maintain their competence over the volumes of labour migration and carefully guard this;7 therefore, MPs represent a way
to circumvent the lack of EU competences in this matter.
The issue of ‘legal migration’ in MPs can also be seen as the carrot favouring the negotiation of other acts, such as EU readmission agreements. Indeed, Member States can propose through MPs a whole set of initiatives, including migration, development and possibilities for legal migration, partly conceived as a counterbalance to the burden of a readmission agreement, especially where it includes a clause on third-country nationals. Even though it seems in the annex of the scoreboards that a significant number of projects are related to legal migration, an analysis of the content of these projects shows otherwise. MPs to date have not led to any real legal migration opportunities (Andrade et al., 2015; IOM, 2012, p. 10). Projects under the heading of “legal migration” mostly involve initiatives to inform migrants about legal migration channels to the EU or the dangers of irregular immigration.
Cape Verde has 13 such projects, and almost half of the total projects proposed in the annex relate to legal migration. This goes in line with Cape Verdeans’ interests in favouring the mobility of their people and creating new channels for legal labour migration. In fact, 10 out of the 13 projects are related to “employment, management and facilitation of legal migration and integration”. These projects aim at meeting the following two aspirations: developing better legal migration opportunities for Cape Verdeans and
5 See European Commission, Circular migration and mobility partnerships between the
European Union and third countries, COM(2007) 248 final, Brussels, 16 May 2007, 4.
6 See European Commission, Policy Plan on Legal Migration, COM(2005) 669 final,
Brussels, 21.12.2005, 1, 4.
7 See Art. 79(5) TFEU; see also Andrade (2013), pp. 263–81 and Reslow (2012), pp. 223–
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informing potential migrants of possibilities and risks related to migration. Clearly the second aspiration has gotten the most attention.
In the case of Cape Verde, Portugal and France proposed to promote the admission of certain groups of workers under specific legal schemes. In one project, Portugal proposes “the signing of a new Protocol on migration … extending the scope of the Protocol on temporary migration of Cape Verdean workers to work in Portugal”. France proposes to conclude a bilateral agreement on concerted management of migratory flows with Cape Verde, including opening up its labour market for specific activities.
Compared with other countries, Moldova has a very high number of projects; over half of the implemented and ongoing projects come under this theme of mobility, legal migration and reintegration.
Finally, in Morocco, this category of projects was the second most important (in the number of proposed projects, not in terms of the allocated budget) at the time of concluding the MP and it became the main category within which new projects were proposed later on.
Concretely, none of these projects aim at developing new opportunities for legal migration from Morocco to Europe but instead aim at informing potential Moroccan migrants of the legal immigration channels and the risks of irregular migration. It is striking that relevant projects on legal migration are related to pre-existing deals or discussions at the bilateral level; they relegate MPs to ‘centralising’ the different initiatives without really offering further access to the EU labour market for third-country nationals.
The second pillar focuses on irregular migration and trafficking in human beings. It is under this pillar that most of the projects have been implemented and new projects have been added after the conclusion of the MPs. This general trend is true for Cape Verde and Morocco. Both MPs make a direct reference to “the promotion of an effective readmission and return policy”, stressing the central importance of readmission agreements in MPs. Negotiating an EU Readmission Agreement (EURA) and a Visa Facilitation Agreement are part of the political commitment embedded in the MP. The case of Moldova is peculiar, as it had concluded a readmission agreement before the conclusion of the MP. Moreover, and linked to this, it has a lower share of projects in this category.
The third pillar, “[p]romoting international protection and enhancing the external dimension of asylum policy”, is solely included in the MP with Morocco because at the time of concluding the MPs with Cape Verde and Moldova, only the GAMM existed. However, two projects related to
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international protection were added to the scoreboards of Cape Verde and Moldova at a later stage.
The fourth pillar encompasses “maximising the development impact of migration and mobility, migrants’ rights and the empowerment of migrants”. At first, the MP with Moldova was dedicated to the fight against irregular migration. But, with the conclusion of the first collection of projects, the focus shifted towards migration and development.8 Cape Verde is
hoping to follow a similar pattern.9 The number of ‘migration and
development’ projects quadrupled after the conclusion of the MP, becoming the main theme in terms of projects proposed. In the case of Morocco, migration and development has an average weight in terms of proposed projects (24 out of 115).
Implementation dynamics
Relations between the EU and the third country are often viewed as embedded in broader international relations, with instruments such as MPs putting forward an EU agenda of migration control that interplays with and at times influences cooperation on development aid, trade relations and visa policies.10 It is also assumed in much of the literature that MPs put more
pressure on the third country than on participating Member States.11 Reslow
(2012, pp. 323, 325) highlights the “take it or leave it” approach applied to the cases of Moldova, Cape Verde and Senegal, where the same MP text was unilaterally proposed by the EU to these third countries with little room for negotiation. One could assume that similar power structures persist during the implementation of the MP if the EU’s interest remains similar. In this case, the projects that are being implemented are largely influenced by the EU and Member States, as they are funding them.
The notion of ‘reversed conditionality’ would nonetheless challenge this assumption. Some scholars have observed that conditionality can also be “reversed” and tie the EU more significantly to the interests of the third country (Cassarino, 2007, p. 179). In other words, the relations between different parties to an MP may be more dynamic than what is often assumed (Tittel-Mosser, forthcoming). In practice, the application of conditionality by
8 Interview, 26 October 2016, DG for Migration and Home Affairs, Brussels.
9 Interview, 23 February 2016, Ministério das Relações Exteriores de Cabo Verde, Praia.
10 See Carrera et al. (2016); Carrera et al. (2012); and Brocza and Paulhart (2015), pp. 1–2.
11 See Carrera and Hernandez I Sagrera (2009), p. 321; Carrera and Hernández i Sagrera
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the EU has been limited regarding southern Mediterranean countries (Balfour, 2012, p. 16). It seems far from straightforward to actually implement such EU conditionality (Qadim, 2015, ch. 3). This can be explained by the difficulty for the EU to adopt a strong position towards countries with which further strategic cooperation is needed (Cassarino, 2007, pp. 191–92). The increased reliance of the EU on third countries to address irregular migration and cooperation on border control has a price: third countries are gaining a strategic position that gives them the possibility to pose their own conditions to the EU and Member States.
What this means concretely for implementation of the MPs is that the projects are not static over time, they rather change according to shifting interrelationships between the Commission, Member States and the third country involved. This translates into the Scoreboard continually changing, with different versions circulating. ‘Implementation’ of the MP is thus not a rational or linear process, and neither is the annex or Scoreboard a clear roadmap towards implementation (Den Hertog, 2016a, pp. 294, 298).