So much promise, so little delivery: evidence-based policy-making in the EU approach to migrant smuggling

The 2020 New Pact on Migration and Asylum confirmed the continuity of the EU and its Member States’ largely repressive approach to migrant smuggling. Over the last few years, evidence-based inputs coming from the local level – and particularly from actors responsible for the implementation of anti-smuggling measures – have led to the assessment and review of the related EU penal framework. Yet, notwithstanding the emergence of several critical elements, calling for a re-definition of such framework – such as migrants accused of being smugglers and the criminalisation of humanitarian actors –, policy outputs have not altered the existing legislation. By disclosing the interactions between policy-makers, in a bottom-up perspective, this article explores the role of evidence in the (failed) reform of the EU framework, with a view to contributing to a new institutionalist understanding of the EU politics of evidence-based migration policy-making.