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Tightening the EU's External Borders: The Impact on Euro-Mediterranean Relations

In the past two years, the EU has been confronted with a massive flow of migrants and refugees across the Eastern and Central Mediterranean. To meet the challenge various efforts were made to reinforce the Union’s external borders, more precisely those of the Schengen Area. The measures introduced are bound to affect Euro-Mediterranean relations or, as the EU sees it, relations with its southern neighborhood. As I want to show in this paper, the results are mixed. Border tightening creates some new barriers between the Union and its neighbors but, as the EU soon realized, effective border management, whether on land or at sea, cannot be done alone. It requires some degree of cooperation with countries outside the Union. That can also entail a border opening. Migration policies often cut both ways – greater separation can be accompanied by new forms of proximity.