Mohammad Masoud Gol Aghaei
PhD Student in International Relations, University of Isfahan
Introduction
Over the past several decades, the European Union has cultivated an image of itself in which its legitimacy as an international institutional actor derives not from military or economic power, but from its commitment to values such as human rights, democracy, the rule of law, and human dignity. This image, repeatedly reinforced in the official discourse of European institutions and the literature on international relations, has positioned the European Union as a model of human rights protection for other international actors. Nevertheless, recurring migration crises in the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas, growing arrivals of asylum seekers from war-torn and insecure regions, and the gradual redefinition of threats within European political discourse have created a new environment for the EU’s border policymaking. Under these circumstances, migration management, border control, and the prevention of security risks have become central policy priorities, sometimes coming into direct conflict with the European Union’s human rights obligations. In recent years, this tension has emerged as one of the most significant challenges confronting the EU in both its internal and external policies.
This article seeks to demonstrate that the securitization of Europe’s borders, through the expansion of technological surveillance, cooperation with third countries, and the delegation of certain migration-control responsibilities to those countries, has not merely transformed the European Union’s migration policies but has also called into question the philosophical foundations of its human rights model. The central question addressed in this article is whether the European Union can still regard itself as a global standard-bearer of human rights values when its borders have become sites where security, sovereignty, and human rights obligations must be balanced against one another. The principal hypothesis advanced here is that the securitization of the European Union’s borders should not be understood as a temporary departure from its normative model, but rather as a fundamental transformation of its identity as an international actor. Within this transformation, border protection has come to occupy a position as a security value alongside human rights values, at times entering into conflict with them. To examine this hypothesis, the article first introduces the conceptual framework of normative power and securitization theory. It then examines the operational mechanisms through which European borders have been securitized, analyzes the human rights implications of this process, and finally evaluates the tension between the European Union’s normative identity and its security practices.
From Normative Power to Border Securitization: A Conceptual Framework
Since the late 1990s, international relations scholarship has portrayed the European Union as a distinctive type of international actor, one whose power derives not from military or economic instruments, but from its capacity to disseminate norms and standards of conduct to other actors. Ian Manners, a professor at Lund University in Sweden, argues through his concept of “Normative Power Europe” that, unlike traditional actors in the international system, the European Union constructs its distinctive identity by shaping global norms in areas ranging from human rights and good governance to the abolition of the death penalty (Manners, 2002: 239). From this perspective, the EU’s international legitimacy depends on the degree of consistency between its normative discourse and the actual conduct of its institutions in both domestic and foreign policy.
Meanwhile, within the field of security studies, the Copenhagen School has developed a different approach to understanding how an issue moves from the realm of ordinary politics into the domain of security. Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde, prominent scholars associated with the Copenhagen School of Security Studies, define securitization as a speech act through which an actor presents a particular phenomenon as an existential threat to a designated referent object, legitimizes this claim before an audience, and thereby justifies extraordinary measures that fall outside normal democratic procedures (Buzan et al., 1998: 25). Jef Huysmans, a professor at Queen Mary University of London, subsequently applied this approach to the analysis of migration within the European Union. According to Huysmans, since the mid-1980s, migration has gradually shifted from being understood as a socioeconomic issue to being treated as a security concern, increasingly associated with threats such as terrorism, transnational crime, and social instability (Huysmans, 2000: 751).
The intersection of these two approaches reveals a fundamental contradiction. Europe’s normative power rests on value-based dialogue, transparency, and respect for human rights, whereas securitization involves removing an issue from ordinary democratic processes and placing it within a sphere of emergency decision-making characterized by reduced accountability. In other words, whenever migration is framed as a security issue, the very mechanisms of oversight and human rights protection upon which Europe’s normative identity rests are weakened.
The significance of this contradiction extends beyond the specific issue of migration. Two scholarly traditions—normative studies and critical security studies—which are generally examined separately, need to be considered together to understand the actual conduct of an actor such as the European Union. If, as constructivists maintain, the identity of an international actor is formed through the continuous repetition of practices and discourse, then the persistence of security-oriented border policies may gradually alter what it means for Europe to be “normative” in the eyes of its audiences. Consequently, what appears on the surface to be a temporary response to a crisis may, in practice, become an integral part of European identity. This is the issue explored in the following sections of this article.
The Operational Mechanisms of EU Border Securitization
The securitization of Europe’s borders has not remained confined to the level of discourse; rather, it has been translated into practice through the establishment and strengthening of specific institutions, technologies, and international arrangements. Frontex was established in 2004 as the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders and was renamed the European Border and Coast Guard Agency in 2016, when its mandate was substantially expanded. The agency has become one of the principal symbols of this process. Sarah Léonard, a professor at the University of South Wales in the United Kingdom, has demonstrated that Frontex has moved beyond its role as a coordinating body, embedding a risk-management and preventive-control approach into European border policy through joint operations at maritime and land borders (Léonard, 2010: 234). The gradual expansion of the agency’s powers, including its access to independent operational equipment from 2016 onward, reflects its transformation from an administrative coordinating body into an actor with autonomous operational capabilities in border management.
Alongside Frontex, the development of surveillance infrastructure and biometric databases, including the European Border Surveillance System (EUROSUR) and other migration-related databases, has moved the European Union toward what may be described as “data-driven border governance.” Under this approach, the border is no longer merely a geographical line but a network of surveillance, tracking, and risk prediction. This digitalization of borders has made it possible to make decisions concerning individuals before they reach European territory, extending the application of security-oriented approaches beyond physical borderlines into areas outside the EU’s formal territorial boundaries.
Another dimension of this process is the externalization of migration control to third countries. One of the clearest examples of this approach is the EU–Turkey Statement of March 2016, under which the European Union undertook commitments concerning financial support for refugees residing in Turkey and the revitalization of Turkey’s EU accession negotiations. Turkey, in turn, agreed to readmit irregular migrants eligible for return from the Greek islands and to strengthen controls over migration routes. The arrangement significantly reduced irregular migrant arrivals in Greece, but human rights organizations have criticized it as an example of Europe evading its protection responsibilities toward asylum seekers (Human Rights Watch, 2026). A similar model has been replicated in the EU’s cooperation with countries such as Libya through the funding, equipping, and training of their coast guard forces.
These instruments do not operate independently of one another; instead, they are interconnected within the broader framework of the European Union’s border governance. The expansion of Frontex’s operational powers has been accompanied by the development of surveillance and information infrastructure, including EUROSUR and migration databases, strengthening the agency’s capacity for monitoring, risk assessment, and the coordination of border operations. Similarly, the delegation of certain migration-control responsibilities to third countries draws upon the EU’s financial, institutional, and surveillance capacities, enabling comparable models of cooperation to be implemented across different sections of Europe’s external borders. From this perspective, what initially appears to be a series of separate responses to different crises can be understood as interconnected components of a broader system of security-oriented border governance. Within this system, the development of operational, surveillance, and information capabilities, together with cooperation with third countries, creates a mutually reinforcing framework.
Human Rights Implications: From Pushbacks in the Aegean Sea to the New Pact on Migration and Asylum
The most significant manifestations of the tension between Europe’s normative identity and its security practices can be observed in the concrete human rights consequences of the European Union’s border policies. Between March 2020 and September 2021, a joint investigation by several European media outlets revealed that Frontex had been involved in, or was aware of, at least 22 incidents of unlawful migrant pushbacks in the Aegean Sea. These incidents resulted in the return of at least 957 people without undergoing the legally prescribed asylum procedures, with some of these incidents recorded in Frontex’s internal reports under the designation “prevention of departure.” Following its own investigation, the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) also concluded that Frontex’s senior management had been aware of serious incidents involving violations of fundamental rights and, in certain cases, had failed to properly record, report, or follow up on them. In the wake of these investigations and the resulting pressure, Fabrice Leggeri, then Executive Director of Frontex, resigned from his position in April 2022 (Al Jazeera, 2022). The incident clearly exposed the gap between accountability mechanisms in European border management and the EU’s stated commitments to transparency and human rights protection.
International arrangements have not been immune to similar concerns. The EU–Turkey Statement has faced comparable criticism, with advocates for asylum seekers’ rights regarding the arrangement as an example of Europe transferring its protection responsibilities to a country whose standards for the reception of asylum seekers differ from those of the European Union, potentially jeopardizing the principle of non-refoulement. In recent years, this concern has become one of the central elements of criticism directed by refugee rights organizations at Europe’s externalization policies (Human Rights Watch, 2026).
Another significant development that further formalized the tension between the European Union’s security imperatives and its human rights obligations at the legislative level was the European Parliament’s adoption of the New Pact on Migration and Asylum in April 2024. The Pact institutionalized mechanisms for accelerated border procedures, under which asylum applications may be examined over a period of up to twelve weeks at or near the EU’s external borders, while allowing for severe restrictions on applicants’ freedom of movement under certain circumstances. In its criticism of the Pact, Human Rights Watch has placed particular emphasis on the 20 percent threshold used to determine which applicants are subject to border procedures. Under this criterion, applicants from countries with an EU-wide average international protection recognition rate of 20 percent or lower are, in principle, subject to the asylum border procedure. According to the organization, this approach risks giving greater weight to nationality and aggregate recognition statistics in the assessment of individual asylum claims, thereby creating tension with the principle that each asylum application must receive an independent examination. Human Rights Watch has also warned that disparities among EU member states in effective access to free legal assistance and procedural safeguards could, in practice, weaken the legal protections available to asylum seekers (Human Rights Watch, 2026).
Another example of this trend can be found in the Italy–Albania agreement, signed in November 2023 and implemented in 2024. Under this five-year agreement, Italy could transfer certain migrants rescued by Italian forces in international waters to two facilities on Albanian territory for the processing of their asylum applications. Under the terms of the agreement, asylum procedures and certain executive powers at these facilities would operate within the Italian legal framework. The scheme envisaged the capacity to transfer up to approximately 36,000 people annually (Corti, 2025). However, its initial implementation in October 2024 immediately encountered legal challenges. In several cases, Italian courts refused to validate the detention of transferred migrants and ordered their return to Italy, citing doubts about whether their countries of origin could be considered “safe” (ANSA, 2024). Legal disputes surrounding the scheme continued, with the compatibility of Italy’s criteria for designating a “safe country of origin” with the requirements of EU law becoming a central point of contention between the Italian government and judicial authorities (Al Jazeera, 2025). Despite these challenges, the Italian government continued to pursue the scheme and resumed transferring migrants to Albania. This demonstrates that, unlike the controversies surrounding Frontex, which came to prominence largely following media investigations and official inquiries, the conflict between government policy, legal requirements, and human rights considerations in the Italy–Albania case became publicly apparent from the very earliest stages of implementation.
Another example of this trend emerged in Greece in July 2025, when the government responded to an increase in maritime arrivals from North Africa, particularly along the route from the Libyan coast to the island of Crete, by restricting certain groups of new arrivals from accessing ordinary asylum procedures. On July 11, 2025, the Greek Parliament passed legislation by 177 votes to 74, suspending the examination and registration of asylum applications for people arriving in Greece by sea from North Africa for a period of three months and allowing for their return before they had undergone the ordinary asylum procedure (Al Jazeera, 2025). Human Rights Watch considered the measure incompatible with the right of access to asylum procedures and the principle of non-refoulement, warning that such policies could expose people fleeing crises and conflicts, including the war in Sudan, to the risk of being returned to unsafe conditions (Cossé, 2025).
Two further examples illustrate a similar pattern in recent years, in which considerations of migration control and security have taken precedence over asylum protection obligations. In July 2026, a large-scale influx of migrants from Morocco into Ceuta, one of the European Union’s two land-border enclaves on the African continent, developed into one of Spain’s most significant recent border crises. Following the incident, a substantial proportion of those who had entered Ceuta returned to Morocco, while the Spanish government emphasized the return of individuals who did not meet the requirements for residence or international protection. This approach once again brought to the forefront questions concerning effective access to asylum procedures and the boundary between migration control and Europe’s human rights obligations (Al Jazeera, 2026).
Furthermore, following the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, several European countries, including Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, and Greece, began reviewing their procedures for assessing Syrian asylum claims. Some governments, including Austria, also raised the possibility of facilitating the return of Syrian nationals. These developments prompted a response from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which emphasized that the return of Syrian refugees must be voluntary, informed, safe, and dignified, and that the conditions necessary for large-scale, sustainable returns were not yet in place (Al Jazeera, 2024).
These developments can be analyzed in relation to the longstanding concept of “Fortress Europe” in the critical literature on European migration studies. Since the 1990s, this concept has been used to describe the simultaneous processes of gradually removing internal border controls under the Schengen framework and strengthening controls at the European Union’s external borders. What is new about recent developments is not the emergence of this tendency itself, but its institutionalization and expansion through legal mechanisms, surveillance technologies, and cooperative arrangements with third countries, making a reversal of this trajectory increasingly complex. The New Pact on Migration and Asylum, the Italy–Albania scheme, restrictions on access to asylum procedures in Greece, developments at Spain’s borders, and policies concerning Syrian asylum seekers all point to the persistence and expansion of a common pattern in European border governance, rather than merely a series of isolated responses to separate crises.
The Tension Between Normative Identity and Security Practices: A Critical Assessment
The juxtaposition of these two sets of evidence—the European Union’s normative discourse on the one hand and its documented record of security-oriented border practices on the other—raises the question of whether the EU can still be regarded as a coherent “normative power.” Realist approaches to European foreign policy have challenged this conception from the outset, arguing that the notion of Normative Power Europe downplays the role of strategic interests, security considerations, and the structural constraints of the international system. From this perspective, the European Union’s normative identity cannot be analyzed independently of its calculations of power and interest. Consequently, security-oriented practices in areas such as border control do not necessarily constitute a departure from the EU’s fundamental character; rather, they may reflect the simultaneous interplay of norms, interests, and security imperatives within European foreign policy (Hyde-Price, 2006: 220).
Conversely, it can be argued that the existence of institutions such as the Frontex Fundamental Rights Office, together with the monitoring requirements established under the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, demonstrates the European Union’s formal efforts to preserve a human rights framework alongside its security policies. EU institutions and official documents have not explicitly abandoned their human rights responsibilities, although the effective implementation of these obligations continues to face serious challenges (Manners, 2002: 246).
Neither of these interpretations, however, can fully explain what is taking place at Europe’s borders. By reducing the entire normative discourse to an instrumental façade, the realist interpretation fails to explain why the European Union continues to bear the political and institutional costs of establishing oversight bodies, publishing critical reports on its own conduct, and accepting the resignations of senior officials. Such costs would be unnecessary if its normative discourse were merely ceremonial. Conversely, the more optimistic interpretation, which regards this tension as simply part of an ongoing and unresolved negotiation between two competing logics, overlooks the fact that in every concrete instance where these logics have come into direct conflict—from pushbacks in the Aegean Sea to the New Pact’s 20 percent threshold and the Italy–Albania scheme—security considerations have prevailed at the level of political decision-making. The conflict between these two discursive traditions may be genuine, but its practical outcome has thus far systematically favored the logic of control and containment. The Italy–Albania case reinforces this conclusion from a different perspective: even when the judiciary, one of the most powerful accountability mechanisms available for the protection of human rights, repeatedly and unequivocally rules against a security-oriented policy, the political determination of member state governments to pursue that policy can delay the implementation of judicial decisions or circumvent them. The Greek case illustrates the same point from another angle: there was no need to circumvent a court ruling, as the parliament itself passed, by a majority vote, legislation that stands in clear conflict with the European Union’s human rights obligations. This demonstrates that the tension between norms and security within the European Union cannot be resolved merely by strengthening oversight or judicial institutions unless the political will of member states also shifts in the same direction.
This situation has significant implications for the European Union’s international standing. An actor that presents itself as a model of commitment to human rights norms in its engagement with developing countries and global human rights movements loses credibility in the eyes of those audiences as the gap between its professed principles and its practices at its own borders becomes increasingly apparent. Such a loss of credibility may, in turn, undermine the European Union’s capacity to shape international norms in other areas.
Conclusion
The analysis presented in this article reinforces the argument that the securitization of the European Union’s borders should not be regarded merely as a temporary and exceptional response to migration crises. Rather, it should be understood as a fundamental transformation of the EU’s political identity—a transformation that has taken shape through the establishment of security institutions, the digitalization of border surveillance, and the transfer of protection responsibilities to third countries. This transformation has produced tangible consequences, ranging from unlawful pushbacks to accelerated border procedures and offshore transfer schemes such as the Italy–Albania agreement.
The answer to the central question of this article—whether the European Union can still regard itself as a global standard-bearer of human rights values—is twofold and conditional. At the discursive and institutional levels, the European Union has not explicitly abandoned its normative identity and continues to provide for mechanisms to monitor fundamental rights within its border policies. In practice, however, the evidence suggests that during crises or periods of domestic political pressure, security-oriented considerations prevail, even when judicial institutions have explicitly ruled against the policies in question, as demonstrated by the Italy–Albania case. This situation places the European Union in a contradictory position: an actor that simultaneously claims to serve as a model of human rights protection while implementing policies that, in many instances, fail to conform to those same standards.
Accordingly, the future of the European Union’s normative credibility depends on its ability to narrow the gap between discourse and practice. Achieving this requires genuinely strengthening independent monitoring of fundamental rights at borders, rather than merely maintaining the appearance of oversight, ensuring transparency in the reporting of border operations, and securing the political commitment of member states to comply with domestic and European judicial rulings in this field. Without such reforms, the European Union risks seeing the image of “Normative Europe” reduced to a purely symbolic discourse that no longer corresponds to the reality of “Security-Oriented Europe.” In this regard, future research could examine this issue more closely through comparative analyses of how member states implement the New Pact on Migration and Asylum and schemes similar to the Italy–Albania agreement.
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