ABSTRACT
The Italy-Libya MoU is a small piece of a larger scenario. Over the past decades, the European Union (EU) has been implementing different strategies of externalized border controls, such as visa requirements, carrier sanctions, extraterritorial patrolling of borders, ‘safe third country’ procedures. The ‘European Agenda on Migration’, elaborated in response to the European migration crisis of 2015, confirms the emphasis of the EU migration policy on cooperation with third countries in the management of migration, borders and asylum but is still based on the global approach to migration and mobility and on readmission agreements as a central instrument of the external dimension of EU migration policy. The most significant change concerned a progressive extension of the number of people covered by these readmission agreements, that is not only ‘nationals’ of the readmitting State, but also ‘third country nationals’ to be readmitted to transit countries.
