Breaking the Cycle

Cooperation between the EU and North African states currently focuses heavily on border protection and repatriation, while human rights standards often remain secondary. Migration is increasingly treated as a security policy problem – at the expense of long-term perspectives and equal dialogue. Both in Europe and North Africa, these dynamics lead to human rights violations at borders, questionable migration agreements and weak protection systems for refugees.

The publication is based on a comprehensive analysis of current challenges and tensions in EU-North Africa relations. It develops concrete recommendations for a migration policy that places human rights, equality and responsible cooperation at the centre – on both sides of the Mediterranean.
 

Problem Analysis

• Current migration governance operates in permanent crisis mode, using externalization strategies that shift responsibility to North African partners through financial incentives while legitimizing fragile authoritarian regimes in Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt.
• These transactional agreements lack accountability mechanisms, creating systematic violations at borders and producing a "fiction of control" that actually weakens EU geopolitical capacity and normalizes human rights violations.
• Growing xenophobia in Europe and state-led discrimination against migrants in North Africa threaten the universality of human rights, with migration becoming an entry point for policies that erode democratic foundations.

Roadmap for Change

The analysis presents two concrete future scenarios - continuity versus change - demonstrating how current policies lead to further instability, while a human rights-centered approach delivers more sustainable migration governance. The publication concludes with ten practical recommendations for transforming EU-North Africa cooperation from transactional border management to comprehensive partnerships based on international law and regional ownership.