The migration deals struck between the European Union (EU) and various Arab states are overwhelmingly designed to shield Europe by externalizing border control and responsibility, with the humanitarian dimension serving as a secondary and often compromised objective.

While these agreements are publicly framed as "comprehensive partnerships" that address both security and humanitarian concerns, their structure, financial allocations, and demonstrable impact show a clear and dominant prioritization of deterrence and security over the protection of vulnerable people and the long-term resolution of humanitarian crises.

I. The Dominance of the Securitization Agenda

The fundamental premise of EU migration policy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is the "securitization of migration," where irregular arrivals are treated primarily as a national security threat rather than a complex socio-political or humanitarian challenge. This outlook dictates the nature and terms of the agreements.

A. The "Aid for Control" Transaction

These partnerships operate on a transactional model often termed "aid for control" or "externalization." The EU provides substantial financial packages, technical support, and political backing in exchange for the partner country's commitment to:

1. Border Interception and Surveillance: Strengthened patrolling of their land and sea borders to prevent migrants from departing for Europe (e.g., funding for the Libyan Coast Guard, advanced surveillance equipment for Turkey's and Egypt's borders).

2. Readmission and Return: Cooperation in readmitting migrants who have reached Europe but whose asylum claims have been rejected, and in facilitating the return of migrants to their countries of origin.

3. Containment: The tacit, and often explicit, agreement to host and contain large refugee populations (e.g., in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon) to prevent their onward movement to EU territory.

This financial support, exemplified by major deals with Turkey (2016), Tunisia (2023), and Egypt (2024), primarily funds the "border wall" of Europe, effectively shifting the administrative, logistical, and ethical burden of migration management away from EU external borders.

B. Financial Priorities

A review of the funding structure within these deals reveals a disproportionate focus on security mechanisms:

• Direct Security Funding: Significant portions of the financial packages are explicitly earmarked for border management, training of security forces, and anti-smuggling/trafficking operations. While the latter is presented as a humanitarian measure (saving lives from smugglers), its primary operational goal is interception and deterrence.

• Development Aid Re-prioritization: EU funds that fall under the umbrella of "development cooperation" are often re-prioritized to address the "root causes" of migration. While this sounds noble, in practice, it is often tied to local projects designed to discourage migration or is conditional on successful migration control. This conflates development objectives with migration management, diverting resources from genuine, long-term poverty reduction or governance reform.

II. The Compromised Humanitarian Dimension

While EU rhetoric includes language on protecting migrants and addressing root causes, the implementation of these deals frequently results in humanitarian costs and the undermining of international law.

A. Undermining Asylum Rights

The focus on deterrence creates an environment that actively works against the principle of non-refoulement and the right to asylum.

• Inhospitable Environments: By empowering transit countries to be the primary interceptors, the EU pushes vulnerable individuals into legal and physical limbo. Many of these Arab states—including Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt—lack robust domestic asylum systems, reliable legal safeguards, or the institutional capacity to genuinely protect refugees.

• Complicity in Abuses: Human rights organizations have documented numerous cases where EU-funded or supported operations have been linked to illegal pushbacks at sea, violent expulsions, arbitrary detentions in inhumane conditions, and even torture in the custody of partner state forces. By outsourcing the act of control, the EU maintains plausible deniability while enabling severe human rights violations in its neighborhood.

B. Failure to Address Root Causes Effectively

The security-first approach is also short-sighted, as it fails to adequately tackle the underlying drivers of migration, which are primarily instability, conflict, and economic precarity.

• Focus on Symptoms: The deals focus on stopping the movement (the symptom) rather than resolving the core issues. As a result, when one route is shut down (e.g., through Turkey), migration simply shifts to more dangerous and lethal routes (e.g., through Tunisia, Libya, or the Atlantic coast). This is known as the "waterbed effect."

• Legitimizing Authoritarianism: The need for a "reliable" gatekeeper forces the EU to overlook severe democratic and human rights deficits in partner countries. By offering financial and political legitimacy to authoritarian regimes, the EU effectively undermines its own long-term objectives of stability and governance, arguably entrenching the very conditions—repression, corruption, and lack of economic opportunity—that compel people to leave in the first place. This trade-off elevates immediate security over sustained democratic stability.

III. Strategic Vulnerability and Political Leverage

A critical unintended consequence of the EU's securitized approach is the transfer of strategic leverage from Europe to its Arab partners, further demonstrating the deals' primary security focus.

• "Migration Blackmail": By making its own internal security dependent on the cooperation of external partners, the EU exposes itself to coercive diplomacy. Leaders in countries like Turkey have repeatedly and explicitly used the threat of "opening the gates" to extract political concessions or secure greater financial aid from the EU. The deals create a dynamic where the host countries can weaponize human movement to advance their own national interests, demonstrating that the migration flows are seen as a political currency, not a humanitarian responsibility.

• Erosion of Soft Power: The prioritization of security over values severely damages the EU's image as a "normative power" on the global stage. Its policy of funding border fortifications while remaining silent on the human rights abuses these funds enable is seen as hypocrisy by civil society groups and international observers, weakening its credibility and soft power leverage in the very regions it seeks to stabilize.

In summation, while EU migration agreements invariably contain clauses related to humanitarian assistance for refugees within the Arab host states, the core strategic design, financial priorities, and diplomatic actions all confirm that their overwhelming purpose is the externalization of border control and the shielding of European territory from irregular arrivals. The humanitarian element is largely confined to managing the consequences of this containment policy, often at the expense of international law and the safety of the migrants themselves.