‘It is like déjà vu all over again’ an inside analysis of the management of EU migration reform

ABSTRACT This article analyses the EU’s third attempt to reform its asylum and migration regime. Our focus is on process management. Instead of looking at positions or policy substance, we analyse how to manage the migration reform negotiations. We use the method of embedded process tracing to analyse, in real-time, the interplay between the member states and EU institutions, from the Commission’s Pact on Migration of September 2020 until the end of the French Presidency in June 2022. On a conceptual level, we unpack the notion of an the EU that is ‘failing forward’ in this, and in other major, crisis reforms. We argue that this failing forward notion obscures a variety of patterns of intra- and inter-institutional coordination. We conclude that, in spite of déjà vu sentiments, the role of the European Council, the Commission, and the Council of Ministers was notably different during this round, and arguably more effective.