Normalising 'the Hotspot Approach?' An Analysis of the Commission's Most Recent Proposals

• Author: Giuseppe Campesi
• Profession: Senior Lecturer and Aggregate Professor (tenured) in Law and Society. Before joining the Dept. of Political Sciences at the University of Bari (Italy)
• Pages: 93-104

93

8. NORMALISING 'THE

HOTSPOT APPROACH?'

AN ANALYSIS OF THE

COMMISSION’S MOST RECENT

PROPOSALS

Giuseppe Campesi

In the 2015 European Agenda on Migration, the ‘hotspot approach’

was referred to as one of the main immediate actions to sup-

port Greece and Italy to ‘swily identify, register and ngerprint

incoming migrants’ (European Commission 2015). According to

the description provided by Commission’s documents, the hotspot

approach is ultimately a measure of operational support activated

in order to help frontline member countries facing dispropor-

tionate migratory pressure in providing to the registration, identi-

cation, ngerprinting and debrieng of asylum seekers, as well as

return operations. To that end personnel of the European Asylum

Support Oce (EASO), EU Border Agency (Frontex) EU Police

Cooperation Agency (Europol) and EU Judicial Cooperation

Agency (Eurojust) are deployed on the ground and work with the

authorities of member countries concerned to help to full their

obligations under EU law.

e approach has been object of intense criticism, especially

for the alleged violations of human rights of migrants and asylum

Table of Contents