Empowering Autocrats: The EU’s Migration Partnerships with Turkey, Tunisia, and Egypt

Abstract

This paper studies the EU’s partnerships with Turkey, Tunisia, and Egypt to control illegal migration to Europe. The 2016 EU-Turkey refugee deal, the 2023 EU-Tunisia Memorandum of Understanding, and the 2024 EU-Egypt Strategic and Comprehensive Partnership exhibit the EU’s policy of externalization of migration to countries of origin and transit in the EU’s neighborhood. The analysis assesses the repercussions of this externalization on the EU’s liberal democratic actorness on the world stage and the deepening autocratization in the Middle East and Turkey. Two preliminary findings are presented. First, the EU prefers transactionalism in the conduct of its foreign policy with the three countries. This is evident in the unconditional nature of these migration agreements and the sidestepping of the European Parliament as a critical actor in the process. Second, this transactionalism supports ongoing autocratization in all three countries by lifting external accountability and providing much-needed resources for these regimes: These autocratic regimes not only find greater leeway to contest the EU’s liberal democratic values (practically and discursively) but also resort to strategies of “refugee rentierism” in disregard for international refugee law. As such, the EU has enabled democratic breakdown in Turkey and Tunisia and autocratic deepening in Egypt.