Migration, development and the EU Trust Fund for Africa

Since 2000 the EU has emphasized the need for its development cooperation with the African states to contribute to the reduction of irregular migration flows into the EU. As a consequence, not only the EU-Africa development cooperation was directed to addressing the root causes of migration from Africa, but the EU has also tried to make the disbursement of its development aid conditional upon the fight against irregular migration from the continent, with disappointing results. As some scholars criticized the growing subordination of the EU development cooperation to the fight against irregular migration from Africa by arguing that development is positively associated with migration, others insisted on the need to delink security and migration from development. This chapter takes a different view. By analyzing the evolution of the EU-Africa cooperation on migration and development during the last two decades in general, and the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa established in 2015 in particular, this chapter shows that while on the one side the structural imbalances of the African economies remain one of the main causes of migration (in and) from the continent, on the other side the ideological vision at the core of the EU-Africa development cooperation prevents it from addressing the root causes of underdevelopment in Africa, with negative effects on the EU’s potential contribution to both an effective management of migration flows (in and) from the continent and global justice.