HMN 2025: How Research hyperlinks 2016 migration settlement to rise in central Mediterranean fatalities and route adjustments

Migration agreements between “transit nations,” corresponding to Turkey or Libya, and Europe have lately change into the norm as emergency measures to attempt to cease irregular migration.

In 2024, for instance, Egypt obtained over 5 billion euros to enhance its border safety measures. This sort of initiative follows as a model the settlement signed in 2016 between the European Union and Turkey to stop refugees and migrants from getting into the EU: the principle narrative is that such offers assist to scale back total irregular migration to Europe.

A brand new study by researchers at IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca analyzed for the primary time with in-depth quantitative strategies the consequences and influence of this landmark EU-Turkey Statement. The findings have been revealed in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications.

On the idea of this analysis, it seems that the deal the European Union established with Turkey in 2016 not solely didn’t work to decrease the phenomenon, but additionally produced, as unintended penalties, a rise in irregular migration on different routes and the mortality of migrants.

In March 2016, the EU and Turkey formalized an announcement supposed to scale back irregular entries into Greece by strengthening border safety and returning irregular migrants from Turkey.

The EU-Turkey deal, created as a strategic response to the migration disaster of 2015, dedicated Turkey to take again all irregular migrants who entered Greece, whereas the EU pledged to resettle one Syrian refugee to the EU for each particular person despatched again (the so-called “1:1 mechanism”). In addition, the EU additionally dedicated 6 billion euros in monetary support to assist refugee-hosting efforts, accelerated visa liberalization guarantees, and revived accession talks.

Irene Tafani and Massimo Riccaboni, the 2 authors of the paper, centered their evaluation on a principal “counterfactual” query: What if the EU-Turkey deal weren’t applied? How many migrants would have crossed borders from Turkey to Greece and all the opposite routes accordingly?

Their analysis noticed how the nationalities that constituted the vast majority of migrants crossing the Aegean Sea have been redistributed after the EU-Turkey settlement. They used each month-to-month information on irregular crossings from Frontex, the EU company accountable for coordinating border {control} and migration administration between member states, and fatalities from the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project.

The study first examined the tried crossings from 2011 to early 2017 throughout 5 main migration routes within the Mediterranean: the western Mediterranean, which connects ports in Algeria and Morocco with Spain; the western African, which hyperlinks the western coast of Africa with the Canary Islands; the central Mediterranean which connects Italy and Malta with Libya, Tunisia and Egypt; the jap border route, which stretches through land from jap Europe to Turkey; and eventually the jap Mediterranean route which represents an vital hyperlink between Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Then it in contrast the nationalities predominantly utilizing the jap Mediterranean route previous to October 2015 (when the Joint Action Plan was offered) with {control} teams. The principal intention of the evaluation is to deduce the influence of the deal on the usage of completely different routes by completely different nationalities.

From the research it emerges that between April and December 2016, roughly 2,000 migrants who would have used the jap Mediterranean route have been redirected to the central Mediterranean, a route related to extra harmful sea passages and much increased mortality dangers.

The central Mediterranean route’s demise charge almost doubled within the aftermath of the settlement, pushed by a number of large-scale shipwrecks alongside the Libyan coast.

By combining causal estimates of rerouted crossings with noticed mortality charges, the research calculates a internet addition of round 45 deaths attributable to the EU-Turkey Statement’s impact. The concern is that some migrants merely shifted routes reasonably than abandoning the journey. Since the central Mediterranean route is significantly extra perilous, on stability, the EU-Turkey Statement produced a internet enhance in deaths.

“Our work highlights the necessity for international insurance policies. It doesn’t make sense to conclude agreements with single nations, and concentrating on a single migration pathway,” says Tafani, Ph.D. scholar on the IMT School and principal writer of the paper. “Bilateral offers with out broader coordination might merely relocate migration flows, and finish to push susceptible populations towards much more harmful routes.”

“Our study highlights the significance of adopting an evidence-based migration coverage method in Europe based mostly on rigorous coverage influence evaluation,” provides Riccaboni, professor of economics on the IMT School.

“Policymakers ought to resist the temptation to have a good time declining arrivals in Greece with out recognizing that these individuals haven’t renounced migration,” concludes Tafani. “They are merely discovering different routes, placing their lives at larger danger in Libya’s waters.”