Endeavours to export a migration crisis: Policy making and Europeanisation in the German migration dilemma

Abstract

This article examines the potential for ‘Europeanising’ the policy process within Germany ‐ examining the constraints and facilitators that have played a defining role in ‘Europeanising’ asylum and immigration issues. It demonstrates that despite the magnitude of the asylum crisis within Germany, blockages evident within the domestic policy process initially prevented a domestic policy solution. In response the federal government instituted a concerted attempt to resolve the issue outside the domestic arena, exporting the issue to the European decisional level. The processes that governed policy making on the European level within this policy sector proved incapable, however, of adequately addressing the issue. Thus, although agreement on the need to harmonise asylum and immigration policies was forthcoming, consensus on the means to achieve and implement substantive policy harmonisation proved elusive. The ‘Europeanisation’ of asylum and immigration policies within Germany has therefore been inherently limited. In response the German government felt compelled to supplement measures agreed at the European level both with a renewed effort within the domestic arena to resolve the constitutional deadlock and through bilateral agreements with their eastern neighbours.