The European Commission’s role in EU–Turkey migration: political leadership through strategic framing

Abstract

This paper suggests an ideational perspective of new institutional leadership and applies it to the Commission's political leadership role in the policy process on EU-Turkey cooperation regarding migration during the timeframe from 2014 to 2016. For this purpose, we propose a conceptual framework -based on the causal mechanism of 'strategic framing' -, which traces how the Commission's ideas were deployed through specific instruments by its actors and networks. Therefore, this paper feeds into the claim for new institutional leadership and more specifically, regarding the Commission's political leadership, by revealing how the Commission's ideational resources have shaped some of the main policy outcomes in EU-Turkey cooperation at the time of the refugee crisis. In this paper, we understand political leadership as a process in which an actor, with institutional, ideational and personal resources, proactively mobilises to shape the policy processes and their outcomes.

EU Sanctions Against the Russian Federation and Their Implications for the Foreign Trade of the Czech Republic

“…However, a minority opinion stream attempts to argue that these restrictive measures go beyond the scope of the permissions provided by International law (Voynikov, 2022). This is a very interesting point, because the current President of the European Commission, Ursula van der Leyen, is well-known for her perception of the geopolitical role of the EU -to put an end to European wars and to follow International law (Baracani, 2023). Source: Own processing by Authors based on information provided at https://finance.ec.europa.eu/eu-and-world/sanctions-restrictive--measures/sanctions-adopted-following-russias-military-aggression-against-ukraine_en Table 2: Overview of sanction packages adopted following the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation.…”

“…Interestingly, the first wave was in the era of Jose Manuel Barroso and Jean-Claude Juncker as the President of the Commission and Catherine Ashton and later on Federica Mogherini as High Representative, while the second wave is the era of Ursula von der Leyen and Josep Borrell Fontelles. It needs to be emphasized that Ursula von der Leyen had a 'turbulent ascendance to the Commission presidency' (Müller and Tömmel 2022) because she did not have the democratic legitimacy of a Spitzenkandidat, i.e., she was a plan B compromise candidate suggested by the French president Emmanuel Macron(Baracani, 2023). However, ostensibly this does not slow her in her endeavors, see the Green Deal or these ten packages, in particular the third package removing selected Russian banks from the SWIFT messaging system(Baracani, 2023).Since March, 2014, the EU has launched a myriad of both general and individual sanction instruments against the Russian Federation and its subjects.…”

“…It needs to be emphasized that Ursula von der Leyen had a 'turbulent ascendance to the Commission presidency' (Müller and Tömmel 2022) because she did not have the democratic legitimacy of a Spitzenkandidat, i.e., she was a plan B compromise candidate suggested by the French president Emmanuel Macron(Baracani, 2023). However, ostensibly this does not slow her in her endeavors, see the Green Deal or these ten packages, in particular the third package removing selected Russian banks from the SWIFT messaging system(Baracani, 2023).Since March, 2014, the EU has launched a myriad of both general and individual sanction instruments against the Russian Federation and its subjects. All of them are valid (at least according to the firm conviction of the EU) and (hopefully) enforceable, they cover one or more of four fields (arms embargoes, restrictions on admission aka travel bans, asset freezes and other economic measures such as restrictions on imports and exports).…”

International migration and the NGOs working in the field of migration in Turkey

“…The status of Turkey in international migratory systems has changed in the last decades. Thus, it has become a transit site for migratory flows coming from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia en route to Europe; a destination country for regular and irregular forms of immigration from various geographies with different motivations; and a third country that hosts asylum seekers and refugees mainly from conflictual neighbouring regions and provides protection to them (Baracani & Sarotto, 2023; Efe & Jacoby, 2022; İçduygu & Aksel, 2013; İçduygu et al., 2014; İçduygu & Yükseker, 2012). The origin countries of immigrants in Turkey vary owing to geopolitical, economic and social factors.…”