Frontex reform in the context of the migration crisis: explaining the failure to upgrade the agency's mandate

Abstract

The Migration crisis has brought significant attention to Frontex inability to tackle the crisis and the necessity to reform the agency had a common understanding between EU actors. However, after the reform process, agencies mandate was not upgraded. This master thesis states that EU member states are those who are not willing to upgrade Frontex mandate and it aims to find the main factors that influenced the failure to upgrade its mandate. To answer the research question, supranationalism, intergovernmentalism, EU agency theory and principal -agent framework was used.With process tracing method used, the document analysis and national member states positions were analyzed in order to see what interests all of the actors involved in decision making process had. The main argument was approved as member states were those who were not willing to delegate more power to the Frontex. Keywords: EU specialized agencies, European integration, power delegation, Frontex, authonomy