Between a rock and a hard place: The EU’s transactional approach to migration

Since 2016, the combination of two trends—the increasing political importance of migration within the EU, and the volatile political and security outlook in Africa—continues to shape the draft of a broader European strategic vision for migration.
This essay will examine and explore the EU’s evolving and changing relationship with North Africa in terms of building migration policy and using North Africa to support the EU’s migration agenda. For geographic and geopolitical reasons, countries in North Africa play a determinant role in the EU’s migration policy, and cooperation with
third countries is an essential pillar of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum. The EU has maintained and consolidated a transactional approach, as reflected by migration-related conditionality on development aid; the resort to incentives such as financial aid, trade relations and visa policies to secure the cooperation of third countries; and closer relations with states such as Egypt and Tunisia.