Small States and the European Migrant Crisis: Politics and Governance

By Ian Taylor

This edited book examines the experience of small states in Europe during the 2015–2016 migration crisis. The contributions highlight the challenges small states and the European Union faced in addressing the massive irregular flow of migrants and refugees into Europe and the Schengen Area. Small states adopted a number of coping strategies and proved relatively effective in navigating the storm they faced. Externally they pursued strategies of shelter-seeking, hiding, hedging and norm entrepreneurship, while domestically they tended to securitize migration and to pursue scapegoating by blaming the EU and other states for the nature and magnitude of the crisis. During this crisis management, their small administrations proved resilient and flexible in their responses, despite suffering from limited resources and being subject to the shifting preferences of stronger actors. This book shows that independent of whether we view the migration crisis as a crisis for the European Union or Europe as a whole, or how we interpret the intensity and severity of the crisis, this was a crisis for small states in Europe. The crisis disrupted the liberal and institutionalized order upon which small states in the region had increasingly based their policies and influence for more than 60 years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Release date: Apr 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9783030662035

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Introduction and Framework

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

T. Joensen, I. Taylor (eds.)Small States and the European Migrant Crisishttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66203-5_1

Introduction: Small States and the Migrant Crisis in Context

Tómas Joensen¹   and Ian Taylor²  

(1)

Centre for Small State Studies, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland

(2)

School of International Relations, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK

Tómas Joensen (Corresponding author)

Email: [e-mail]

Ian Taylor

Email: [e-mail]

Keywords

MigrationSmall state governanceInternational lawEuropean UnionDublin Regulation

In 2015 and 2016, the European Union (EU) faced an unprecedented arrival of asylum claimants and illegal migrants, with more than one million people reaching EU territories. This has been termed ‘Europe’s 9/11’ (Krastev 2017: 1, 13), greater in scale than any in modern history. The crisis shared parallels with the Vietnamese boat people crisis of the late 1970s, the flight of Cubans to the US in the 1980s and 1990s, and Australia’s attempts to stem illegal migration from Southeast Asia since 2001. A substantial portion of the arrivals came from war-torn Syria, but there were also Africans, Pakistanis and others. Many of these migrants made the hazardous journey across the Mediterranean Sea in small, overcrowded vessels provided by people smugglers. Alternatively, they journeyed over land for hundreds of kilometres through Turkey and into Europe.

This mass movement of people created a humanitarian crisis as well as posing serious public policy problems for individual member states of the Union, as well as for the EU as a whole. Claims for asylum and refugee status effectively doubled in the EU in 2015, with an excessively large number of such applications being made in Austria, Germany and Sweden after the migrants had passed through other safe EU countries. In proportion to the host country’s populations, this created a further dilemma.

The EU’s interpretation of its obligations under the 1951 Geneva Convention sets out the procedures for how asylum claims are examined and received within the Union. This Convention and its subsequent protocol define who is a refugee i.e. a person having a ‘well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion’, and also their rights in hosting states. Before the 2015 crisis, the regular management of asylum claims in the EU had been the so-called Dublin Regulation, which required that an asylum claimant should apply for asylum in the first EU country that they arrived in. Often referred to as the common European asylum system, Dublin set out the processes for receiving and examining asylum claims, but left issues such as the level of economic support (i.e. welfare benefits) to national discretion. The Dublin legislation also elaborates what rights migrants may have in practice for European administrations and created two lesser categories of protection: temporary and subsidiary status. The Dublin rules were agreed in the early 1990s and transformed into an EU regulation in 2003, alongside four other complementary directives setting down minimum standards for the treatment of asylum seekers and the establishment of a common European database for registrations.

However, during the crisis, the majority of migrants ignored the principles of the Dublin Regulation and travelled through a number of EU countries to whichever country they had decided they wanted to live in (as noted, Austria, Germany and Sweden were favoured destinations). It was there that they applied for asylum. The sheer weight of numbers meant that the ‘Dublin Regulation’ broke down and the individual member states started to process asylum applications even when applicants had clearly moved through a number of EU countries. Overall, the 2015 crisis exposed the flaws in the Dublin regime and various member states on the EU’s borders and where the migrant problem was the most intense, insisted on an improved EU-wide system that would share the burden more equitably.

Thus, a migrant relocation arrangement was decided on by the majority of EU member states and aggressively pushed by Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission. However, there were serious objections from a number of member states, particularly by the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, who did not want to host such migrants. They argued they were not countries of immigration and that if EU membership carried with it the obligation to become multicultural societies, this was news to them. These countries viewed the Commission’s switch from voluntary to mandatory acceptance of migrants as the beginning of a power-grab by Juncker into an area of national sovereignty where it did not belong. Juncker insisted that if the scheme was voluntary, many countries would hide behind the generosity of others and do nothing. Despite obvious signs of resistance, Juncker persisted, believing that the reluctant countries would eventually fall into line. However, when the resisters flatly refused to accept mandatory quotas, ever, Juncker’s plans were thwarted.

The new system did not operate as planned. With its hugely challenging location and terrain, Greece emerged as one of the weakest links in the Schengen system (Brady 2012: 4, 27–37). Schengen had abolished many of the EU’s internal borders, thus permitting passport-free movement across most of the Union. Established in 1995 with a common external border, Schengen was enlarged to include Greece in 2000 and the bulk of countries in Central and Eastern Europe in 2007. The EU’s open borders within totally depend on the competence and willingness of the frontier states to refuse entry to illicit migrants and to consider the asylum claims of other arrivals. When that broke down during the 2015 crisis, the EU’s entire immigration policies lost their integrity. The role of Greece in this outcome should be noted. The country had first implemented Schengen in 2000 and was in theory applying the Dublin rules, but from the first, it exhibited the same sort of behaviour that had characterised its euro membership (Brunnermeier et al. 2016). Despite the Commission’s prompting, it refused to build an asylum system of the kind expected in Western countries, reasoning that no one could ask for asylum if there was no one to ask. In addition, like Italy, it regularly waved illegal entrants northward to avoid the headache of establishing their status. Fellow Schengen countries struggled to decide whether its seemingly chaotic administration was intentionally malign or incredibly weak. Whichever, Greece’s lackadaisical approach was an incredible pull factor for irregular migrants and led to some member states temporarily reintroducing border controls, thus negating the Schengen Area. Incapable of compelling member states to accept a quota system, an effective opt-in arrangement was established to transfer successful asylum claimants. This scheme was set up in March 2016 and part of the wider ‘EU-Turkey Statement on Refugees’, in which Turkey agreed to accept migrants being transferred back out of the EU. In return, the EU undertook to provide finance for the welfare of the returned migrants while they stayed in Turkey, as well as grant visa-free access for Turkish citizens to the Union. This was a rather hasty promise given that Turkey was a safe country (but far from a rich or stable one) and one with large minority populations who would be tempted to access Europe.

The migrant crisis demonstrated that the EU’s ability to deal with migration issues is complicated and contradictory. Migration goes beyond borders, both literally and figuratively, and thus a communal and united European approach was (and is) required. However, the 2015 crisis showed that the challenges and costs were not evenly distributed. Both Greece and Italy (to a lesser extent, Malta) were the initial receiving countries, as they are on the southern frontier of the EU. The sheer numbers would have challenged even the most competent and biggest of administrations. Other countries, such as Germany and Sweden, emerged as the destination of choice for a very large proportion of the migrants, due to the migrants’ perceptions about the welfare benefits on offer. A noticeable feature of the migrant crisis was the lack of interest by most migrants in claiming asylum in the first safe country in Europe that they arrived in, as per normal refugee conventions. They wanted to live in Germany or Sweden. On the other hand, the Central and Eastern European EU countries were much less popular destinations. They were either aggressively defensive of their national sovereignty (such as the Czech Republic and Hungary) or so far from the crisis (and so unknown by the migrants) that they experienced minimal effects of the emergency (the Baltic countries being prime examples). The result of this diversity within the EU generates a typical collective action problem: those who felt the most problems dealing with the huge numbers of migrants had the greatest self-interest in a joint solution (Germany and Sweden), or avoided responsibility (Greece and Italy). Those who experienced less challenges were less absorbed in arriving at solutions, or rejected outright any role in sharing responsibility.

The crisis also challenged the EU’s four much vaunted freedoms (freedom of movement of goods, services, capital and persons). In practical terms, this means that all EU citizens have the legal right and ability to settle and find employment anywhere in the EU. The effects of this led to Brexit, as is well known. However, not all EU member states have equal welfare systems and standards of living. Because of Schengen migrants that had entered the Area were free to move around as and when they wished and this meant that the member states were effectively powerless to stop ‘asylum shopping’ by the migrants. This is why a number of member states suspended their participation in Schengen and re-imposed border controls.

In addition, the migration crisis exposed deep fissures within the EU over the grand visions being promoted by the Commission and its Brussels bureaucrats. Concern over perceived excessive immigration is now widespread across the EU and established political parties who had taken for granted their right to rule now face serious challenges from more nationalist parties, many of which have a strong anti-immigrant stance. Thus, the ability and resolve of the EU’s collective leadership to address the migrant crisis always felt hidebound by the possibility that the non-traditional parties would outflank them from the right.

Small States and the Crisis

The migration crisis was a generalised predicament for the whole of Europe, with the size of the countries involved not specifically relevant. By this, it is meant that the rather chaotic policy responses during the period were the consequence of fluctuating levels of conjunctions with existing and developing EU norms as well as ad hoc pronouncements, widespread disagreements within the Union on how to respond and a continual readjustment of key essentials in the migration management system of the EU. The very large number of asylum applicants and illegal migrants fundamentally tested the entire EU and, in doing so, revealed that a lack of unity on migration questions and how to deal with them posed very serious problems for any coordinated response. Hugo Brady’s chapter in this volume discusses these matters from an insider perspective and shows that the much vaunted claims of European unity, which of course is the sine qua non for the EU as a project, was rather fragile. Unilateral policies adopted by individual member states (Merkel’s de facto open border announcements) clearly added to the disunity and further exposed a rather fractious debate within the Union that touched on a whole array of questions as to what exactly the EU was and what was to be Europe’s identity.

With regard to the smaller states however, a number of specific problems became apparent, which this volume seeks to address and analyse. The key element is that a structural weakness vis-à-vis their size became apparent in a number of cases. In terms of their geographic areas, populations and economies, most small states simply have less resources and space to accept large numbers of migrants. Moreover, depending on their geographic position within Europe, the response of the populations with regard to the crisis varied. Countries immediately close to the external border, such as Slovenia and Croatia, which became effectively throughways for the migrants, had qualitatively different matters to attend to than, say, remote nations such as Estonia and Iceland. And of course both Greece and Malta, lying on the very front line of the crisis had a whole different set of problems.

The issue of historical patterns of migration and the political persuasions of the populations played a role here and it seems that given the small size of some of the countries discussed in this volume, had a much more immediate effect on policy than in some of the larger states, where policy was top-down and elite-driven (the Merkel example being classic). Iceland is a very good exemplar of this small state trend, as Gunnarsdóttir discusses in her chapter. Here, a sympathetic population actually asked for more migrants, which reflects perhaps on the liberal and humanitarian values of the Icelanders. It could also of course, reflect the fact that Iceland was dealing with relatively insignificant numbers of migrants, that the country has no history of any problems with the integration of large numbers of migrants (unlike much of the rest of Europe) and that the small numbers of migrants were seen as exotic characters who could be embraced by Iceland. If the number of migrants seeking a living in Iceland were to increase exponentially, it would be interesting to observe whether this welcoming approach would continue.

Of course, another key issue facing small states is their restricted influence within the EU to direct and influence policy. Even a coordinated approach by all the small states in the EU would not be enough to significantly affect policy and so in this case, the small states are rule-takers, rather than rule-makers. Relatively limited bureaucratic capacities (in terms of numbers, not skill-sets) that may hamper their efficacy within the various forums of the EU is something that all small states must deal with. As some of the chapters demonstrate, the small size can be a positive factor in terms of the close working relationships between administrative officers that can develop in a small setting, where interpersonal linkages can be favourable to swift policy outcomes and a harmonious environment (of course, such smallness can also go in the opposite direction). The chapters on Estonia and Iceland in particular discuss these matters. However, this is very much at the domestic level and in terms of an EU-wide influence, is limited.

The overall migration crisis revealed that a huge number of the migrants were very much focussed on reaching either Germany or Sweden as their destinations of choice. What this meant was that, as the chapters show, many of the policies adopted by the small states during the period were based on facilitating the onward movements of the migrants to elsewhere. This is a very different set of procedures than if they were destination countries who would have to manage, in perpetuity, the integration of huge numbers of new residents. Countries such as Estonia, Slovenia, Croatia, etc., where the migrants had no intention of staying (even if granted asylum status) had to develop a set of policies to administratively manage the new arrivals, but the larger (and much more difficult) task of planning their future integration and how the indigenous society would have to adapt and deal with the problems was something that was largely not necessary.

As the chapters on a number of countries (such as Greece and Slovenia) show, the response of some of the small states was to effectively wave through the migrants to their northern terminuses. This response was perhaps understandable; given the logistical and political problems posed by the crisis, but it did strike a blow to the idea of the EU’s external borders and introduced an element of beggar-thou-neighbour to the whole process. The suspension of Schengen was a response to this development. The situation was massively compounded by Merkel’s independent decisions, the effect of which was to multiply the pull factors by a huge magnitude. Given the signal that Europe was apparently open to all, masses scrambled to access the migrant routes and get to Germany in particular before the reintroduction of a rational set of policies, based on prudence and not emotion. The rest of Europe then had to deal with the fall-out from this unilateralism. As the chapters on Croatia and Slovenia discuss, the Western Balkan route became a major access point which a number of smaller European countries, unaccustomed to such trends, quickly had to adapt to and seek to control. Malta, as a maritime island in the thick of the crisis emanating out of Libya, similarly had to adapt and develop a raft of provisions.

An interesting aspect of the small states with regard to the migration crisis was that a number of them had been traditionally centres of emigration. Large Maltese and Baltic diasporas attest to the fact that small states are very much (in fact, usually) migrant-sending countries and not migrant-recipients. This is of course due to the perceived limited opportunities afforded in smaller states, with their smaller economies and at times limited prospects for all citizens. For such countries, used to numbers of their citizens seeking emigration as a solution to perceived problems at home, to very quickly switch to become recipient nations, even if only temporarily, has been an interesting dynamic associated with the overall migration crisis.

Layout of the Book

This volume starts with a theoretical discussion of how small states in Europe sought to cope with the migrant crisis. According to Külli Sarapuu, Baldur Thorhallsson and Anders Wivel, the migration crisis represented a defining moment that tested the resilience of extant institutions in the small states and stimulated a number of problems centred on the coping ability of small states in terms of policymaking and the means and ability/political will to implement such programmes. The fact that such activities were coping strategies points to a larger central element that is present throughout the case studies, namely that the small states were universally reactive in their responses, aiming to get by during an unprecedented challenge. Proactive policies were a luxury for the larger states and—as Angela Merkel’s unilateralism demonstrated—something which other member states, particularly the small states, then had to respond to. In this sense, the smaller states were in a constant role of playing catch-up to decisions made elsewhere, something which sorely tested the sense of unity and community spirit within the Union.

This testing not only provoked bitter recriminations within and across the Union, it also exposed one of the key weaknesses of a traditional policy exercised by small states, namely sheltering. Due to their inherent limitations, most small states pursue foreign policies that seek to line up with bigger states, while being enthusiastic members of international organisations. This is natural and aims to recompense for their limited capabilities. Political, economic and societal sheltering under the safety of multilateralism and alignment with larger states increases small states’ options, particularly during crises when assistance may be sought from other sources. What the book’s chapters make clear and as Sarapuu, Thorhallsson and Wivel point out is that the migration crisis exposed a policy incoherence within the EU that hitherto had perhaps not been so obvious. The Union was unable to craft serious policy cooperation, with agreements ironically being much easier to attain with non-members, e.g. the EU-Turkey Statement. Indeed, what the crisis revealed to some small states was that their sheltering strategy within the context of the EU had some serious flaws, hugely magnified by the behaviour of larger states such as Germany and, of course, by the Commission in its attempts to impose unwanted policies.

The end result, as the authors point out, has been that the seeming never-ending pressure of migration from outside of Europe has stimulated a rise across the continent in anti-immigration political parties that now seriously threaten the often cosy assumptions made by the establishment in individual countries as to which parties were destined to govern. And with Brexit being driven, in part at least, by concerns over uncontrolled immigration, the European Union must now address these concerns seriously, lest another member state heads for the exit.

Following on from the theoretical framework, the first part of the book entitled Small States and the Current Political Turmoil Related to Immigration includes contributions from Roderick Pace and Hugo Brady. Pace makes the point that crises can often be turned into opportunities and the migration phenomenon can be seen as one such opportunity. Pace argues that the EU will need to construct and apply an integrated approach comprising different policy actions. Contra to the populist sentiment around the time of the crisis, Pace suggests that immigration can be a source of economic growth if the integration or ‘incorporation’ of migrant communities in society can be achieved. While anti-immigration rhetoric has been the most eye-catching in public debates, Pace argues that in general the European public believes that the integration of migrants is the best way forward to avoid costly social cleavages and achieve economic growth. However, the figures show that members of the immigrant communities in Europe are among the poorest segments of society which points towards the need of renewed efforts aimed at strengthening immigrant integration in society. The disproportionate number of migrants choosing to settle in a select few European countries also challenges this optimistic appraisal.

In contrast, Hugo Brady points out that almost two million irregular migrants and asylum seekers arrived in Europe between 2015 and 2018, plunging the EU into a crisis often misconstrued as purely a moral battle between east and west. However, this comfortable conceit obscured dynamic political and interdisciplinary conflicts within the Union that remain unresolved. Their roots go back to the foundation of the passport-free Schengen travel area in the 1990s and centre around the opposing regional interests of member states on border control; disagreements on asylum policy between states and other key players, notably the European Commission and UN Refugee Agency; and the seemingly irreconcilable priorities of diplomats, development experts and interior officials. As a senior advisor on migration in the European Council from 2015 to 2019, Brady gives an insider perspective on the often bellicose debates between EU leaders during this period, while analysing Europe’s crisis responses. By doing so, he seeks to explain how small states worked to protect their fundamental interests.

The following part of the book is entitled On the Frontline: The Experiences of the Border States and includes contributions from Greece and Malta, two countries that had to face head-on the crisis as major arrival destinations. Charalambos Tsardanidis writes that Greece was caught in the eye of a storm as the refugee crisis of 2015 took place at the same time as the deepening of the Greek economic crisis. Tsardanidis asserts that this scenario led to processes of what he calls Europeanisation and De-Europeanisation, whereby the response to both dynamics led to both policy coordination as well as moves away from EU strictures and shifts in Greek opinion to pro-EU stances. This resulted in the deepening of Euroscepticism and the rise of populist parties that sought to respond to the economic crisis through quasi-socialist means, as well as the rise of other parties that took on virulent anti-migrant positions in the names of Greek nationalism.

Triantafyllos Karatrantos then examines Greece’s response to the migrant crisis through the lens of security. Using the case of Greece, the main front-line state during the migration-refugee crisis, the author describes the dual security challenge for front-line states. The first challenge is linked with border security and with the risk of foreign terrorist fighters’ possible infiltration within the mixed flows. Furthermore, Karatrantos notes that those states on the front line were compelled to deal with polarisation from both the migrants as well as indigenous Greeks, who saw a rising of right-wing extremism. Finally, the author describes the measures and the policies implemented by Greece and the lessons learned both at the national and European level.

Shifting focus, Roderick Pace notes that from the end of the Second World War to 1985, Malta was an emigrant country. From that year onward, the annual arrival of immigrants overtook emigrants and has kept the lead to the present. In 2000 irregular migrants began reaching Malta’s shores, accelerating during the crisis. For years, Malta was a ‘stepping stone’ on the path of irregular migration routes from Africa and the Middle East onto mainland Europe. However, since the crisis, Malta has become a migrant destination, which has fundamentally changed dynamics. Although Malta has sought to promote a somewhat haphazard integration policy for those migrants wishing to stay, immigration remains the Maltese public’s highest concern, as it has been for the past two decades; immigration from outside the EU is seen negatively by 71% of the population and 82% support the reinforcement of the EU’s external borders. This is the Janus face of Malta’s approach to migration: welcoming migrants (particularly if from the EU) and promoting integration efforts, while the population is generally hostile to such matters, particularly if the migrants are non-European.

The next part, Waving Them On? The Experiences of Peripheral States, then moves onto discussing states that were indeed ‘stepping stones’, non-destinations or, as in the case of Iceland, dealing with infinitesimal numbers of migrants and thus able to adopt progressive policies that would have been political suicide and/or impossible in destination countries where the number of arrivals was massive.

Primož Pevcin and Danila Rijavec discuss Slovenia’s response during the crisis, noting that Slovenia’s example demonstrated weaknesses of the entire crisis management during the migrant influx on the Western Balkan route. This led to serious tensions within the multi-level governance system of the EU. As Slovenia was primarily a transit country, decision-making and policymaking at the national level tried to optimise border controls and registration facilities for migrants, and subsequently sought to direct migrant flows to its northern border with Austria. Even so, tremendous pressure was placed on the available resources and administrative capacities of Slovenia. Due to its relative lack of resources and associated lack of capacities, Ljubljana sought international (i.e. EU) solutions to provide assistance. However, an overall lack of a holistic strategy for solving the migrant crisis meant that a layering of policymaking developed, leading to delayed crisis responses and effectively decoupled policies. As the policies eventually became contradictory, this resulted in conflicts among different levels of governance, with Slovenia being a good example of such conundrums.

In contrast to Slovenia, which genuinely had to deal with huge numbers of migrants entering the country, albeit not planning to stay, Arndís Anna Kristínardóttir Gunnarsdóttir discusses in her chapter how Iceland’s remoteness meant that a relatively tiny number of migrants made it as far as Reykjavik. This then allowed segments of the Icelandic population and its political class to effectively virtue signal to the rest of Europe (albeit obviously not an EU member) on how to deal with illegal migration: welcome everybody. Gunnarsdóttir asserts that the main obstacle encountered by Iceland was the lack of true solidarity of European states in facing the challenge. While the authorities sought to process irregular migrants along the lines set out by the Dublin Regulation, activists within Iceland continually sought to block these processes and demand that migrants who had travelled through numerous safe countries to reach Iceland (a feat in itself) should stay. The subsequent surrendering to this position by the authorities when related to individual cases is quite remarkable and perhaps unique. However, Icelandic authorities did take the provisions of the Dublin Regulation seriously and it appears that it was only when individual cases were brought to light that opinion and then political responses kicked in. Yet, as the author notes, a strong economic situation in Iceland as well as the lack of negative factors related to mass migration experienced elsewhere in Europe meant that the administrative authorities were reluctant to wholeheartedly apply the strict measures of existing legislature. Public demands to grant more people protection and assistance, a situation perhaps unique in Europe, was the driving force behind this dynamic.

In a chapter discussing Croatia’s response, Đana Luša notes that during the first few weeks of the crisis, Croatia kept its borders open, allowing people to enter the country and helping the migrants onwards to other member states. The motive behind this was that Croatia did not want to become a reception centre. However, in November 2015 a change in policy took place whereby migrants were divided into two groups, those from war affected areas (i.e. possible genuine refugees) and those that were considered merely economic migrants. This took place, not coincidentally, at the same time as parliamentary elections in Croatia, which saw a new centre-right government formed. Croatia then emphasised the need to control its borders and fulfil the technical conditions to enter the Schengen area. Deterring access to Croatia and returning irregular migrants then became the policy. Collective expulsions at the border between Croatia and Bosnia without having asylum claims considered took place. Shifts in favour of nationalist and populist solutions to the crisis confirmed the generalised dichotomy within the EU between sovereignty and supranational aspirations and deep division lines were discovered within the EU on several fronts. Particularly strong were those between core EU states, which were mostly destination countries for all migration flows, and other countries, which refused cooperation in terms of handling the crisis. Also, a clear division arose between EU external border member states and others due to the immense burden the first had to endure. As the crisis evolved, there was a major disagreement between Eastern and Western Europe on how to handle it and opposition to receiving migrants was particularly strong in Eastern Europe, such as in Croatia. However, it should be noted that opposition to immigration also increased in many Western European countries.

Mariliis Trei and Külli Sarapuu’s chapter then discusses Estonia during the crisis. The crisis brought with it issues that had been generally previously non-existent