POLICY BRIEF SUMMARY • Europe has long relied on outsourcing the responsibility for managing migration to other countries. But its failure to ofer real incentives to its partners means that these deals have done little to address irregular migration at the external borders. • In addition, EU foreign policy on migration has been inward-looking, and overly focused on domestic concerns. • As the refugee inlux has continued, Europe has been forced to call on its neighbours for urgent help to reduce numbers. The result is the recent EU-Turkey deal – a quick ix that may face insurmountable problems in implementation. • As its partnerships have loundered, Europe has turned to a range of security tools, such as fortiied borders and military operations against migrant smugglers, that cannot provide a sustainable solution. • To address irregular arrivals, Europe needs a foreign policy on migration that shares the burden with partner countries, going beyond inancial aid packages to ofer real incentives such as legal avenues of migration. It should create tailored, lexible agreements that meet the needs of its partners, not vice versa. EUROPEAN COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS ecfr.eu As the EU and Turkey negotiated the final points of a deal to manage the flow of migrants into Europe, European Council President Donald Tusk announced that “the days of irregular migration to Europe are over”. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, meanwhile, welcomed the forthcoming deal as “a decisive point for resolving the refugee crisis”, and a “real chance at a sustainable and pan-European solution”. Unfortunately, the deal is fraught with problems, from its unstable legal basis to the total lack of capacity to actually implement it. Perhaps most worrying is that it exemplifies the present inability of the EU to come up with a pan- European solution to the migrant crisis. Instead, member states have retreated to their old and familiar way of dealing with migration: passing the buck to countries outside the Union. The EU–Turkey deal is not a “European” solution in this sense but a temporary solution for Europe – and will only be that if it is fully implemented, which is in doubt. The agreement showcases the changed balance of power between the EU and its immediate neighbours, as well as the EU’s diminishing ability to export migration management policies. In the absence of effective, multi-pronged policies to handle migration (including refugee flows) into Europe, many lives have been lost. Despite significant efforts by Italian and Greek coast guards, who perform daily search- and-rescue operations, thousands have died since 2014 in the Mediterranean; and more in the English Channel; the land border through the Western Balkans; and the passage from Russia to Norway, which migrants attempt to cover by bicycle during winter. DEALS WITHOUT BORDERS: EUROPE’S FOREIGN POLICY ON MIGRATION Angeliki Dimitriadi