In October 2023, the Spanish Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, visited Senegal for the third time in the same year with the aim of strengthening cooperation on migration. The minister’s visit took place in a context marked by the increase in arrivals from Senegal to the Canary Islandsarrivals largely driven by the political crisis that the African country was going through. Senegal is, since 2006, one of Spain’s main partners in the outsourcing of immigration control and has become one of the big beneficiaries of the money allocated by the European Union to projects that seek to manage migratory flows in Africa.
“The main issue is saving lives,” said the minister after the meeting with his Senegalese counterpart. According to the official discourse, the objective of these cooperation projects is to protect migrants and address the “root causes” that lead them to migrate. However, behind this facade lies an opaque system that uses the funds provided for the Development cooperation as a lever to force migration control agreements.
Since the creation of the Schengen area, the European Union has opted for a border control model that has been expanding increasingly towards the south, outsourcing the control of migratory flows and allocating billions to projects that seek to control the journey of those who migrate under the umbrella of the fight against irregular migration, human trafficking and organized crime.
Under a “conditional” cooperation model, the European Union leaves responsibility for the design and implementation of cooperation projects with governments of third countries in the hands of agencies with public participation. Many of the Programs considered “European” are so as long as the financing comes from the EU budget. However, those who assume responsibility for intergovernmental cooperation projects are private public management entities accredited as executors of these policies.
Between 2015 and 2021, the main EU instrument for cooperation projects with third countries on migration was the Africa Emergency Trust Fund (EUTFA, for its acronym in English). However, the EUTFA approach has been harshly criticized for his excessive focus on the area of security and immigration control. Of the 250 funded projects, more than half were managed by intergovernmental institutions and cooperation agencies such as FIIAPP (Spain), GIZ (Germany), ENABEL (Belgium), ICMPD (Austria) and the French Agency for Development, with a budget total aggregate that exceeds 3,000 million euros.
Although the main objective of these institutions is not to obtain economic benefits, a large part of their financing depends on the development of European projects. For this reason, they play an active role in influencing border control outsourcing policies. This is the case of International Center for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), an international organization based in Vienna that receives more than half of its money from the EU budget for the management of projects aimed at prevent the arrival of migrants to European borders.
Since 2016, the ICMPD has maintained more than 30 meetings with different representatives of the European Union to discuss migration policy of the Union, acting as a lobby even though it is an intergovernmental agency. This agency is the main one in charge of executing EU outsourcing projects in Tunisia, where it manages funds of more than 33 million euros. The ICMPD is also responsible for managing the Association Mechanisms for Mobility of the EU with third countries such as Türkiye. For the award of this project there was no public call for tender since it was also, to a large extent, idea of the agency itself.
The fact that institutions like the ICMPD are not fully governmental organizations allows these to be carried out. operations with a much lower level of transparency and control than would be required of a government of any Member State. In this way, cooperation agencies have become the armed arm of the European Union for the execution of its anti-migration policies, evading the necessary democratic control mechanisms.
In the Spanish case, the main agency for the management of these projects is the FIIAPP, a public foundation specialized in international cooperation which in 2022 had a budget of more than 100 million euros for the Sub-Saharan Africa region alone. Of this, More than 70% was allocated to cooperation projects with security forces of third Statesincluding police and military forces. So, a securitization model is promoted whose final result is the reinforcement of the repressive capacities of these governments rather than the promotion of human development.
A paradigmatic case of this securitizing logic is the GARSI-Sahel project, led by the FIIAPP. In February 2024, a investigation of the Foundation for Cause revealed that the Government of Senegal was using anti-immigration materials, supplied by Spain within the framework of this project, to repress pro-democracy Protestants. This repression forced many Senegalese to leave the country and head to the Canary Islands. At the same time, the EU decided stop negotiations with Senegal to include the country in a project that would provide safe migration routes, until a new bilateral deportation agreement was reached.
And this is where it becomes evident the less friendly side of outsourcing policies: through veiled and opaque coercion, Europe forces aid recipient countries to play the role of border gendarme. The deal is that if these countries manage to retain the migration route, they will continue to receive funding and development aid. In certain cases, such as the example of Senegal, this could even mean that Europe establishes limited pathways for safe and regular migration.
Given the allegations resulting from the investigation of forCausethe European Commission responded saying that they “firmly defend respect for human rights and international humanitarian law.” However, they continue to perpetuate a border management model in which rights of people who migrate are relegated to the background and the cruelty used to repress them does not matter, as long as they do not reach the doors of Europe.
This year, a research coordinated by Lighthouse Reports showed that Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia detain migrants and refugees based on their skin color. They are then abandoned in remote areas without assistance, water or food, leaving them at risk of kidnapping, extortion, torture, sexual violence and even death. These types of actions are also financed through European money managed precisely by the FIIAPP, in charge of supplying the vehicles and equipment used in these operations. The investigation shows that other authorities such as Frontex are also aware of these practices and that European officials have held discussions about it since at least 2019.
Meanwhile, agencies like the FIIAPP evade responsibilities saying that it is the beneficiary countries of these projects who manage the materials paid for with European public money. The lack of transparency and accountability adds weight to a contradictory discourse. On the one hand, the European Union and a large part of the governments of the Member States position themselves as defenders of human rights and the liberal values of freedom, equality and solidarity. On the other hand, the climate of public debate and the constellation of interests among those same Governments privilege agreement towards common protectionist policies that limit access to people seeking to migrate to Europe. According to the official discourse, the objective is for migration to be “safe, orderly and legal”, but the reality is that no alternative routes are offered for this to happen.
The complex tangle of different programs, agreements and funds destined for immigration control are evidence of an opaque and chaotic system. This externalization system leaves the rights of people who migrate in the background. As a consequence, the cruelty used to suppress these people does not matter, as long as they do not reach the doors of Europe. The use of a delegated management framework for the design and implementation of cooperation projects contributes to the opacity of this system, feeds a contradictory discourse and results in institutionalized hypocrisy. This cooperation model not only does not promote human development, but it militarizes borders that increasingly extend further and further into territories far from the real borders of the EU. Behind a false appearance of security, the EU and its Member States say one thing, while executing the opposite.
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