Inside or outside? Analysing civil society organisations’ lobbying strategies to pursue the revision of the EU Facilitation Directive
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2022-08-22
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en
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With the unfolding of the 2015-2017 “refugee crisis” many individuals and organisations have stepped up to provide assistance to migrants in distress. Many of what seemed to be simple acts of solidarity, however, have been considered as smuggling under EU law. Indeed, Council Directive 2002/90/EC, better known as Facilitation Directive, is the main EU legal instrument that establishes the crime of facilitation of unauthorised transit, entry, and residence (European Council, 2002). Unlike the UN Protocol on Smuggling (2000), the Directive does not effectively exclude forms of assistance without a profit motive from triggering the crimes that it establishes. As a result, many individuals have been arrested or prosecuted for helping migrants at sea or on EU territory. This phenomenon has generated great disapproval across
European civil society organisations (CSOs), who in turn have demanded the revision of the Facilitation Directive in order to stop the criminalisation of assistance to undocumented migrants.
This thesis uses the literature on interest groups to analyse the lobbying strategies at the EU-level of three Brussels-based CSOs calling for the amendment of the Facilitation Directive.
The results show that these organisations manage to find a synergy between direct access to policymakers and activities aimed at mobilising the public.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen