Belarus-sponsored Migration Movements and the Response by Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland: A Critical Appraisal

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2023 8(1), 22-238 | European Forum Insight of 11 July 2023 | (Table of Contents) I. Introduction. - II. Defining migration instrumentalization. - III. Amendments to national legislation against instrumentalization of migration episodes: the cases of Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland. - IV. National emergency measures and their compliance with the fundamental rights framework. - V. EU legislative changes to address the instrumentalisation of migration phenomena. - VI. Concluding remarks. | (Abstract) Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland have amended their legislation to respond to the increased migration flows caused by the policies of instrumentalisation of migrants implemented by the Belarusian government. This Insight illustrates these responses and shows how these EU Member States instrumentalised border tensions with Belarus to adopt restrictive migration policies impacting the rights of people on the move. Such legislative changes follow a paradigm shift at the EU level, in light of which third country nationals who are subject to instrumentalisation are qualified as hybrid threats. As a consequence, EU migration management policies legitimise national restrictive border control measures into the EU legal framework, to prevent the entry of foreign persons into the EU territory. Such a policy approach confirms a chronic inability of the EU to respond effectively and uniformly to mass migration movements, thus driving hostile third States to perpetrate hybrid attacks, such as instrumentalisation of migration practices, to gain political or economic advantages over the EU and its Member States. This Insight argues that EU migration and asylum policies must conform to the highest standards of fundamental rights protection to avert future hybrid attacks in the form of mi-gration instrumentalisation practices. Furthermore, the EU should abandon a securitization rationale that equates people on the move as security threats, thus legitimizing their dehumanisation and dis-regarding their rights