Delegation to the European Commission in EU migration policy : expertise, credibility, and efficiency

Abstract

In 1999, with the entry into force of the Amsterdam Treaty, European Union (EU) migration went from being an area of intergovernmental cooperation to one governed by ever closer version of the Community Method. This shift resulted in a significant production of secondary legislation being agreed at the EU level, regarding all areas upon which the EU had some degrees of competence, namely asylum and refugee, irregular migration, legal migration, administrative cooperation, and border and visa policy. The academic literature is divided in how to interpret policy developments in this area. Some academic contributions have emphasised the divergence from traditional EU policy methods, others have analysed migration policy in the perspective of traditional questions about EU integration, and the majority had some normative assessments of the policies being formulated. This thesis tackles EU migration policy from the point of view of delegation. It proposes to assess the extent of EU integration in this area by measuring the amount of powers the Council of the European Union has granted to the European Commission. The dissertation finds that delegation has occurred in this policy area, and to an extent that is comparable to other, older policy areas, but is uneven across migration categories. Past delegation studies highlighted a number of possible determinants of delegation, such as reducing uncertainty, strengthening the credibility of commitments, achieving efficiency, as well as institutional contexts. This dissertation finds evidence for the credibility and efficiency rationales, as well as conflict between the Council and the Commission. This study is relevant to current debates about how much power EU institutions are and should be granted, whether these institutions are biased towards the nature of the policies, and current trends in EU integration