Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The 2015-16 refugee and migration crisis in Europe catapulted the complex issues surrounding mass human displacement and migration to the forefront of the global stage. While many eyes were glued to the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria, another source continent for migrants was captivating the attention of Europe’s policy makers early on. With nearly 1 million sub-Saharan Africans filing for asylum in a European country since 2010, Africa has become a priority continent for Europe’s external migration policies.[1]

Founded by the European Union in 2015, “EU Emergency Trust Fund for stability and addressing root causes of irregular migration and displaced persons in Africa,” or EUTF for short, promised to be a flexible funding mechanism to help the EU respond to high levels of migrant and refugee arrivals to Europe from across the Mediterranean. Some migration experts fear the political fixation on root causes has fundamentally changed how the EU utilizes development assistance. This paper applies qualitative and empirical analysis to better understand how the EU uses the trust fund to meet its stated migration goal in Africa, namely reducing irregular migration and displacement by addressing their root causes.[2] If the 4.1 billion EUR in the EUTF is appropriately designed to meet its stated objectives, I would expect to find a correlation between the number of irregular migrants originating from a particular country and the amount of foreign assistance it receives from the trust fund. Due to factors explored in this paper, however, I hypothesize that patterns in EUTF fund allocation will instead reveal an EU policy that is less intent on alleviating the development-related drivers of migration and better suited to achieve the EU’s more immediate goal of quickly reducing migration pressures coming from Africa.

To test this expectation and hypothesis, I correlate country-level funding with key migration figures, such as refugees and asylum seekers, individuals found illegally present in the EU, legal visa holders in the EU, and internally displaced persons from the 26 EUTF eligible countries. The results indicate no strong correlations between these variables and funding levels, which largely disproves the expectation that a funding instrument designed to address the root causes of irregular migration and forced displacement would accurately allocate its funding to major countries of origin. From several weak to moderate correlations, the analysis also reveals that the EUTF is (1) better correlated with crises of internal displacement than other forms of migration and (2) pursues conflicting objectives that overlook potential programming needs in key countries of origin.

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[1] Pew Research Report: “At Least a Million Sub-Saharan Africans Moved to Europe Since 2010.” www.pewglobal.org/2018/03/22/at-least-a-million-sub-saharan-africans-moved-to-europe-since-2010/. Accessed Oct. 2018.

[2] See: European Commission. “European Agenda on Migration” (2015) and its update (2017). https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/european-agenda-migration_en / Accessed Nov. 2018.