Pulling Back Navies and Pushing Back Migrants: Questioning the EU’s International Legal Responsibility in the Mediterranean Sea

Abstract

Since the beginnings of the Mediterranean migration crisis in 2015 the European Union (EU) has professed the humanitarian objective of saving lives at sea. Since the emplacement of Operation Sophia in 2015, however, the operational focus has shifted towards border security and the disruption of human smuggling networks. Whilst the maritime security agenda remains strategically and practically important, it is clear that the primary objective has been disrupting migrant flows rather than preventing loss of life. Studies to date have highlighted the potential responsibility of individual European states for migrant ‘push backs’, but few have turned their attention to the potential legal responsibility of the EU itself. Although the Union may well be ‘culpable’ in some sense for its complicity in harms suffered as a result of its ‘outsourcing’ of its external border management, it is far from clear that this complicity translates into international legal responsibility. This paper aims to address this gap. It will consider the empirical evidence suggesting a direct causal link between EU policy and the increasing loss of life and harm to migrants in the Mediterranean, before considering some of the difficulties of translating this apparent complicity into international legal responsibility.