Protecting Borders or Individual Rights? A Comparative Due Process Rights Analysis of EU and Member State Responses to ‘Weaponised’ Migration

In recent years the EU and its Member States have claimed to be increasingly targeted by “weaponised” migration. Due to the contemporary sensitivity of migration-related issues in the EU, neighbouring states are supposedly using the threat of increased migration to force the Union’s hand in other policy areas. Below, several recent examples of this supposedly happening will be discussed, with an emphasis on: (i) the 2021 crisis along the Lithuania-Belarus external border; and (ii) the Turkish decision to briefly open its borders with Greece in February 2020. While the phenomenon of “weaponised” migration raises numerous legal questions, this Insight focusses only on the responses of self-proclaimed “targets” within a European context: the EU and its Member States. With the aim of understanding the impact of Lithuanian, Greek, and EU reforms on due process rights of the migrants supposedly being “weaponised”, the most prominent reforms will be critically scrutinised from the perspective of EU asylum and fundamental rights law. In this Insight, it will be argued that the EU and its Member States strongly favour border security over the due process rights of the migrants involved, reflecting a wider trend of a normalisation of illegal practices at both domestic and EU level.