The New European Border and Coast Guard. Pooling Sovereignty or Giving It Up ?

In September 2016, the European Parliament and the Council adopted a legislative act creating and regulating a new European Border and Coast Guard Agency. One of its proviso appears bound to raise eyebrows, if not controversies. Article 19 states that - should a Member State's failure to control its own borders jeopardize the collective effort to monitor the external borders of the Schengen Area - the new Agency could, at the request of the Commission and with the approval of the Council, deploy Border and Coast Guard teams in that Member State and take over the management of border control operations. This type of transfer of power is unprecedented in the integration process of the EU’s external border management and begs a crucial question regarding the organization of sovereignties within the EU’s institutional architecture. The argumentative arch of this article consists, first, in identifying and defining three paradigmatic conceptions of sovereignty (traditional, post-sovereignist, and post-traditional), and, second, in applying them in turn to our case study to assess which conception provides the best explanatory model for the emerging integration of border management at the European level