Externalisation of Asylum: Cooperation in Defiance of International Protection and the Rule of Law

The long-standing desire of European countries to externalise the processing of asylum applications has recently taken concrete form in the UK/Rwanda and Italy/Albania ’agreements’. While the British initiative has been abandoned, the Italian one has been temporarily blocked. Following the cancellation of the first two transfers of people on the move to camps in Albania, and pending the decision of the Court of Cassation in Rome on the Italian government’s appeal, the latter has recalled the staff mobilised on site.

These experiments, which could be encouraged by the application of the European Pact on Migration and Asylum, are currently running up against the law. Despite these setbacks and their exorbitant cost, they are generating unbridled enthusiasm among European leaders, who no longer hide their desire to push people seeking international protection out of their territories.

The media coverage and the exploitation of these political and legal dramas normalise violations of the rights of people on the move, but also of international law, which defines these rights, and the hierarchy of norms that guarantees them, against a supposedly flouted national sovereignty. Similarly, in "third" countries that are sometimes authoritarian, the migration "partnerships" struck by Europe contribute to delegitimise and irregularise people on the move, in defiance for their rights.

The lack of transparency and the hypocritical, often humanitarian, rhetoric that accompanies the externalisation of European migration policies may have given the impression that a bulwark protects the right to asylum. However, whether they explicitly concern asylum or not, these policies do not just lead to the erosion of international protection, but also to the breakdown of the rule of law, in Europe and beyond.
[Editorial]

Contributors: Mark Akkerman (researcher, Stop Wapenhandel and Transnational Institute), Sophie-Anne Bisiaux (researcher and activist, Migreurop), Morgane Dujmovic (CNRS researcher, geographer and politist, Migreurop), Brigitte Espuche (Migreurop), FTDES, Nawal Karroum (Migreurop), Yasha Maccanico (Statewatch), Claire Rodier (GISTI).

Cartography: Olivier Clochard (geographer-cartographer, CNRS research fellow, Migreurop) for the network’s Cartographic Interventions Brigade.

Photograph: © Maso Notarianni, october 2024, camp of Gjadër-Albania.