The new European border and coast guard agency: pooling sovereignty or giving it up?
Deleixhe, M.; Duez, D. (2019). The new European border and coast guard agency: pooling sovereignty or giving it up? Revue d'Intégration Européenne = Journal of European Integration 41(7): 921-936. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07036337.2019.1665659
In: Revue d'Intégration Européenne = Journal of European Integration. Canadian Council for European Affairs/Conseil Canadien des Affaires Européennes: Montre´al. ISSN 0703-6337; e-ISSN 1477-2280, more
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Author keywords |
Border controls; Frontex; migration; political theory; refugee crisis;sovereignty |
Abstract |
In 2016, the European Parliament and the Council adopted a legislative act creating and regulating a new European Border and Coast Guard Agency. Its Article 19 states that – should a Member State’s failure to control its own borders jeopardize the collective effort to monitor the external borders of the Schengen Area – the new Agency could take over the management of border control operations in that Member-State. This transfer of power begs a crucial question regarding EU’s conflict of sovereignties. First, this article identifies three paradigmatic conceptions of sovereignty (traditional, post-sovereignist, and post-traditional), and, second, it applies them to our case study to assess which conception provides the best explanatory model. We eventually argue that the post-traditional perspective proves the fittest to capture the current integration of the EU’s external border management, best described as an institutional bricolage (by contrast with a grand architectonic design). |
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