From Turkey to Belarus: exploring the EU’s response to migration crises through the lens of functional spillover

Drawing on functional spillover, this contribution examines whether functional spillover as a framework can explain the 2015 European Union-Turkey Joint Action Plan, the 2016 EU-Turkey Statement, and the internal aspect of the Union’s response to the 2021 Belarus–EU border crisis. Furthermore, it considers how these agreements with Turkey, and the response to the instrumentalisation of migration contributed to further integration. To do so, it draws on novel data collected through interviews with EU and member state officials and from a wide range of primary and secondary sources. From the analysis of these sources, we find evidence of functional spillover in the different stages of the negotiations on the European Union-Turkey Joint Action Plan and the EU-Turkey Statement, and in the different aspects of the Union’s response to the instrumentalisation of migration. Second, the analysis shows that the European Commission and a small number of member states–rather than the European Council acting as a collective, shaped substantial elements of the Union’s response to the migratory pressures on the Schengen Area’s external borders.