The EU hotspot approach in Italy: strengthening agency governance in the wake of the migration crisis?

Although the hotspot approach has been one of the key EU responses to the 2015 migration crisis, it has not received much systematic attention from EU scholars. Addressing this research gap, this article examines the establishment and implementation of the EU hotspot approach in Italy and its operational reliance on EU agencies. Building on and extending the conceptual framework of the European Administrative Space (EAS), we show how Frontex and the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) have strengthened both their independent administrative capacity and integration within the EAS. To gain a more comprehensive understanding of the role of EU agencies within the Italian hotspots, we also discuss two important yet widely neglected features of administrative governance, namely the level of precision of the agencies’ mandate and interagency cooperation. Our analysis draws on a broad range of primary sources as well as nineteen semi-structured expert interviews.