BUILDING A COMMON IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM POLICY, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE?

More than twenty years have passed since the 1999 Tampere European Council launched the project to build a common immigration and asylum policy. The main objective was to formulate a public policy that was balanced and that allowed the management of legal immigration, as well as controlling irregular migratory flows in equal parts. Furthermore, all of this would be governed by the principle of solidarity and equity in burden-sharing among the Member States. The axes on which this policy should be built were 1) the need for a global approach in cooperation with countries of origin and transit; 2) the development of a common European asylum system; 3) the importance of ensuring fair treatment for third-country nationals residing in the EU; and 4) effective management of migration flows.

Although these were the initial bases on which it began to be built, the evolution that European migration policy has followed shows asymmetries in the deepening between the different pillars. Part of the content incorporated in Tampere has been diluted in a magma of reproaches and tensions between governments that has impeded progress in the direction set by the original roadmap. The identification of migration as a phenomenon that constituted a threat to host societies has shaped both the discursive framework and European politics. In this way, immigration policy has become part of the block of issues related to security, leaving aside other issues that are essential for the construction of a true immigration and asylum policy to be effectively possible.