© 2020 IAI ISSN 2532-6570 IAI COMMENTARIES 20 | 94 - DECEMBER 2020 1 Tamirace Fakhoury is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the Lebanese American University and the Director of the Institute for Social Justice and Confict Resolution. She is currently the Scientifc Advisor to the Kuwait Chair (2020-2022) at Sciences Po in Paris. This paper was prepared with partial support of the Open Society Foundations, in the framework of the project “A New European Consensus on Asylum & Migration”. Views expressed are the author’s alone. Prior to 2011, Lebanon was no traditional gatekeeper in managing migrant and refugee fows to the EU. Following mass refugee infux from Syria, the small Middle Eastern state acquired key importance in the EU’s architecture of externalisation, alternatively framed as the set of norms and practices that the EU crafts to govern migration from a distance. Lebanon currently hosts more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees and since 2012 the EU has been the key funding power seeking to help the refugee-hosting state cope with the spillover efects that mass displacement brought about on the country. The EU’s recently published New Pact on Migration and Asylum reiterates support to refugees and refugee- hosting countries – including those in Syria’s neighbourhood – as one of the central elements of cooperation with third countries on migration and displacement. After nearly a decade of cooperation between the EU and Lebanon in this area, and ahead of the EU’s new budgetary and policy- planning cycle (2021–27), now is a key moment to critically assess EU- Lebanon cooperation on displacement from Syria. I argue that the EU’s logic of governmentality in the context of the refugee challenge has remained disconnected from a deeper grasp of Lebanon’s cumulative crises on the one hand, and its politics of refugee reception on the other. Moving forward, the EU would need a revamped approach that looks at Lebanon beyond the prism of a partner in refugee challenges, bringing the principle of good governance in EU-Lebanon negotiations as crucial element to improve the relationship, placing it on a more sustainable and mutually benefcial plane. Lebanon as a Test Case for the EU’s Logic of Governmentality in Refugee Challenges by Tamirace Fakhoury