Theory and Practice of the EU Informal Agreements on Migration: Assessing the Gap between EU Treaties’ Ideals and Migration Cooperation Reality
(2025)
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- Authors
- Supervisors
- Sarolea, Sylvie
- Abstract
- This doctoral dissertation investigates the rise, nature, function and effects of the EU informal agreements on migration. It assesses the impact they bear in the EU legal order and in the broader context of international cooperation, addressing the central question: What are the EU informal migration agreements and what is their function in the broader context of the EU external action? The study examines how these non-binding instruments, which lack clear legal status, have evolved into an established practice of the EU external relations. While the phenomenon is not new to international law, where non-binding agreements have been observed for a long time, both migration as a field of international cooperation and the European Union’s contribution to this process of informalisation of international-law making pose unique legal issues. The research is structured in three parts. Part I traces the historical emergence and consolidation of informal agreements, situating them within the broader framework of ‘migration partnerships’. Part II explores insights from theoretical debates, including on the concept of soft law, to examine the uneasy relationship between EU informal agreements and both political agreements and treaty agreements from an international law perspective. It also assesses the compatibility of informal agreements on migration with the EU constitutional framework, highlighting their potential to circumvent EU primary law limitations. Part III assesses their function and effects, focusing on the use of legal, financial, and political tools — particularly capacity-building — to influence third countries’ domestic legal orders. It explores how EU informal agreements on migration interact with broader mechanisms for the EU external action. The findings reveal that informal agreements operate within a dense ecosystem of EU external action instruments and are central to the EU’s attempt to externalise migration control. Through subtle mechanisms of legal influence, these agreements contribute to a normative alignment of non-EU countires with the EU migration objectives. The study concludes that the EU informal migration agreements represent a strategic, if constitutionally problematic, modality of external legal influence. While enhancing flexibility, they risk undermining the EU’s legal coherence and global credibility. This research offers a critical legal lens through which to understand the EU’s evolving role as an international actor.
- Affiliations
UCLouvain SSH/JURI/PJIE - Droit international et européen
Citations
Frasca, E. (2025). Theory and Practice of the EU Informal Agreements on Migration: Assessing the Gap between EU Treaties’ Ideals and Migration Cooperation Reality. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/246490