The EU Agenda on Migration and Development towards ACP countries: Challenges of the Pandemic

Abstract

The article covers 30 years of EU agenda on migration and development. The research objective was to assess its continuity, determine the main trends, and outline the challenges that the cooperation between the EU and the ACP has to face after the pandemic. The EU agenda on migration and development proved to be rather stable. However, the EU motivates migration cooperation by development aid while most ACP countries do not welcome this approach. As a result, the contradictions between the EU and the ACP still exist, despite their formal cooperation after the Cotonou agreement expired. The main trends in the EU policy were the principle of conditionality and the EU's attempts to abandon the universal approach to their ACP partners. The COVID-19 pandemic has aggravated the contradictions in migration and development issues, thus preventing the European Union from upgrading its development policy. The pandemic has the following consequences: global increase in securitization of immigration; strict entry rules and immigration policies; the prospect of expanding access to health care systems for citizens and immigrants. These consequences will inevitably affect the relations between the EU and the ACP.