Leveraging the European Refugee Crisis: Forced Displacement and Bargaining in Greece's Bailout Negotiations

Gerasimos Tsourapas,Sotirios Zartaloudis

doi:10.1111/jcms.13211

Gerasimos Tsourapas, Sotirios Zartaloudis

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13211

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Abstract

AbstractHow does forced migration feature in EU member states' foreign policy and how does it affect their bargaining strategies? While the literature highlights EU‐level policies aiming to manage forced migration flows, we examine how Greece sought to leverage its response to the 2015–16 European migrant crisis. We propose a theoretical framework that explains why the SYRIZA–ANEL government sought to leverage Greece's position as a refugee‐host state via an issue‐linkage strategy tying the management of forced migration to economic aid over the Third Economic Adjustment Programme. Initially employing a ‘blackmailing’ strategy focused on threats, Greece shifted to a ‘backscratching’ strategy of co‐operation after March 2016, once its geopolitical importance and numbers of asylum seekers within its territory were reduced. We provide the first detailed analysis of Greece's foreign policy response to the European migrant crisis, demonstrating the importance of forced displacement in the international politics of EU member states.

Highlights

‘We cannot keep ISIS out, if the EU keeps bullying us.’ Greek Defence Minister Panayiotis Kammenos (Carassava and Aldrick, 2015)
We aim to expand upon existing understandings of the interplay between forced migration and EU member states’ bargaining strategies within the context of the 2015–16 European migrant crisis
Gerasimos Tsourapas and Sotirios Zartaloudis member state affected by forced migration, in order to examine the specific strategies developed by national policymakers in the 2015–19 period and to address the theoretical lacuna on how refugee flows may affect intra-EU bargaining processes

Summary

Introduction

‘We cannot keep ISIS out, if the EU keeps bullying us.’ Greek Defence Minister Panayiotis Kammenos (Carassava and Aldrick, 2015). We have identified how a refugee host state in the Global South tends to develop blackmailing strategies if it contains a large number of refugees and national elites perceive of the country as being geopolitical important vis-à-vis the target state(s); in the absence of either of these conditions, elites are more likely to develop backscratching strategies (Tsourapas, 2019). We test this hypothesis in the European context via the single-case study of Greece during the January 2015–July 2019 period. SYRIZA–ANEL led the negotiations with European creditors over the 2015 Third Economic Adjustment Programme for Greece, the so-called third bailout package, while engaging in issue-linkage strategies that tied interstate bargaining over economic aid with Greece’s management of asylum seekers

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