I. EU’s involvement and the Migration Pact on the Ground: Bosnia and Herzegovina

It’s not a novelty: over the past decade, Bosnia and Herzegovina has increasingly become a frontline of the EU externalization agenda. For its geographical location at the external borders of the EU, and its candidate status in the accession path in the Union, it plays a key role in migration strategies of the Union. 

For its shared border with Croatia, Bosnia represents one of the possible last countries along the Western Balkan Route before the entrance into EU territories, something that makes it a crucial step for people-on-the-move who are willing to arrive to the Union. On the other hand, its effort to enter in the EU and candidate country status, granted from the EU in 2022, entails at least one crucial feature: the country is bound to EU’s conditionality. In other words, if Bosnia wants to proceed with its accession pact, it is bound to respect the conditions imposed by the EU, including upon issues in the realm of migration.

With a field team in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, Collective Aid has documented widespread border violence faced by people on the move attempting to reach Europe, including pushbacks, confiscation of belongings, arbitrary detention, and forced returns, practices increasingly normalized along EU borders.

As one Sudanese man from Khartoum, recounted at Blazuj reception center: “Oh God, they took everything. They took our phones, our money, even took our brains, and then they sent us back again.” His account reflects the human cost of a migration regime shaped by deterrence, containment, and the externalization of EU border control beyond its territory.

Externalization works in mysterious ways: Understanding Enlargement Conditionality

This so-called enlargement conditionality, especially when applied to externalization of migration, comes from a complex and intricate network of mechanisms, including agreements, funding schemes and ad-hoc plans, oftentimes characterised by high levels of secrecy and lack of transparency. However, these series of policies bring about several practical effects. 

Firstly, the EU is able to steer Bosnian national priorities, making migration and border management accession-relevant benchmarking domains. This can be seen from the very beginning of the Bosnian accession process, with the Stabilization and Association Agreement (and especially art. 80-81) that the country signed in 2008 and is still in force. Since the beginning, with this agreement, the EU places emphasis on the need for Bosnia to increase border control, fight “illegal” migration and collaborate on readmissions. Specifically on this last point, for its accession progress, Bosnia was required to sign a Readmission Agreement that forces the country to accept the readmission of third-country nationals that were found to stay illegally in EU territories and that were proven to have passed by Bosnia in their journey towards the EU. 

Since 2011, the Commission releases each year an annual Country Monitoring Report on the progress made by the country on these aims, something that bonds Bosnia to commit to factual changes in the direction wanted by the EU. Moreover, in the aftermath of the Summer of Migration of 2015, with the launch of Western Balkan Strategy, the EU began to insist on the importance of the signature of a Status Agreement with Frontex (at that time still called European Border and Coast Guard), in order for the EU agency to be able to directly deploy personnel in the Bosnian territories. In this sense, the EU has largely invested in the direct deployment of Frontex in the whole Western Balkan region. 

Specifically, Frontex has played and plays a role in the improvement of data-sharing between Western Balkan countries and EU, as well as in the training of local agencies and organizations to improve border management and decrease “illegal” border crossing. While different Status Agreements (to allow for the direct deployment of Frontex in non-EU territories) have been signed in different Balkan countries (Albania-2018; Montenegro-2020; Serbia-2021), Bosnian authorities have longly negotiated the Frontex deployment, something that has been described as a sign of resistance against EU externalization policies. However, in June 2025, this same Status Agreement was signed by Bosnia, allowing the deployment of Frontex in the country’s territories and borders, probably also due to the strong pressure from the EU’s side.

In terms of fundings, the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) represents the most important financial measure on which the country can rely on in order to finance its accession path, i.e., to implement those measures required in order to enter the EU. In this sense, it is the European Commission that establishes the funding priorities for the country, and migration figures as one of those. IPA-related funds, in fact, aim at tackling the improvement of border control, surveillance and migration governance in Bosnia. Practical examples of specific projects under this fund are the financing of management of Temporary Reception Centers in Bosnia through indirect management of IOM, or the increase in border surveillance and Border Police training in the Western Balkans through Frontex participation. Moreover, the erogation of such fundings are conditional to the implementation of different policy reforms, out of which some are related to migration, such as the elimination of visa free agreements with countries that pose an “irregular migration [...] risk to the EU”.

All these projects aim definitely at reaching one objective: externalize the “problem” of migration outside of the European territories, creating a country buffer-zone to be able to prevent people-on-the-move from entering the EU.

The New EU Migration Pact and the Legal Architecture of Externalization

The New Pact on Migration and Asylum, whose application starts on June 12th 2026, stands in continuity with the externalization measures that the EU has implemented so far. It does not represent a fully fledged novelty; rather, it represents a systematical reorganization of EU externalization policies. It is not by chance that one of its four pillars is “embedding migration in international partnerships”, with a specific focus on cooperations on return and readmissions, Frontex deployment and prevention on irregular migration. From its publishing, the pact has created serious concerns in terms of human-right violation for people-on-the-move. The same applies in terms of externalization of migration control, de facto resettling the control and management of migration in non-EU countries, making it more difficult to monitor the respect of human-rights. 

Factually, the New Pact entails 8 Regulations and one Directive. Essentials in terms of externalization are the Asylum Procedure Regulation, which establishes the Border Procedure, the Return Border Procedure Regulation and the Screening Procedure. Firstly, the Border Procedure allows for a fast-track, on the border asylum evaluation for some categories of people-on-the-move without granting to the person the right to physically enter the territories of the Union. Importantly, one of those categories is having a nationality with a low asylum recognition rate in the Member State of entrance. The Return Border Procedure allows, in the eventuality of rejection of the asylum application at the Border Procedure application, for the direct return of the applicant without stepping foot into the Union’s territories. Lastly, the Screening Regulation establishes pre-entry screening at the external borders of the Union, and allows for immediate data-sharing between Member States.

The New Pact, together with the Provisional Political Agreement on Safe Third Countries, which automatically gives to candidate countries such as Bosnia the status of safe third countries, represent a step further in the EU’s strategy in migration externalization. Moreover, with its focus on returns and readmissions, especially in terms of agreements with third-countries, the New Pact paves the way for the Return Regulation (which is currently being discussed in Brussels). This Regulation, without being promulgated yet, is already being criticized for its risk of ICE-ification of EU migration policy marking third countries like Bosnia a crucial location for potential return hubs.

Already in 2022, the at-the-time Commissioner for Enlargement Olivér Várhelyi, in a Joint Press Release with the Directorate General for Migration and Home Affairs, stated that the EU is “focusing on strengthening border protection, fighting the smuggling networks and stepping up returns from region” because “migration remains an area where we need to work even more closely with our Western Balkan”. The interests and priorities of the EU in the region have been clear for a long time: externalizing migration control outside of the Union territories and preventing people from even stepping a foot into the EU, creating a functional buffer zone in the Western Balkans, and in Bosnia specifically. The New Pact represents only a confirmation, systematization and intensification of such trends, to make Fortress Europe an even stronger reality. 

Words by Johanna fauteck Fundraising Officer, Sarajevo