La construction de la politique d’immigration de l’union européenne entre 2009 et 2019 : vers un modèle commun ? Etude de cas : l’Espagne, la Grèce et l’ Italie

The communautarisation of migration policies is a slow process. EU member states have often shown reluctance to share their sovereignty in this sensitive field throughout European integration. The entry into force of the Lisbon treaty - supposed to enhance migration policies integration - occurred simultaneously with the euro-zone financial crisis and was followed by a so-called ‘migration crisis. Which political developments finally occurred at the supranational level? Which decision-making methods were used? Did they comply with the previous EU member states’ commitments of building a common migration policy?
Greece, Spain, and Italy handled most of the migrants’ flows reception which demonstrated a lack of solidarity among EU member states. Considering this lack of solidarity, have these three states’ decisions converged towards EU norms and requests?
First, we assumed that a slowdown in the integration process would have taken place following the migration crisis. Then, we affirmed that the three States would pursue national interests by developing strategies within the institutional framework of the European Union. Finally, we have stated that these strategies could lead to the emergence of national models with elements of convergence.
In order to verify these hypotheses, we focused on the EU and national legislative developments, the degree of states' compliance with EU standards as well as the position of the states held during the negotiation taking place at the supranational level. We have therefore used primary sources (institutional reports, legislations, statistics, interviews contents, etc.) and secondary academic sources (results of research projects, articles, etc.)
Ten years after the entry into force of the Lisbon treaty, our findings confirmed that building a common European migration policy is a difficult goal to achieve at a supranational level and hindered - in combination with other factors - the Europeanization process. Thus the intergovernmentalist theory has proven to be valid for analyzing European integration as well as the Europeanization in Spain, Greece and Italy of immigration policies between 2009 and 2019.
Thus, the neo-functionalist logic which until then dominated the development of the economic and monetary policies of the European Union has been partially challenged when it comes to migration policies. As for the neo-institutional historical and rational choice approaches, they have proved relevant for the study of the construction of European immigration policy whose result consists of both existing common commitments (path dependency) and national interests.