From the Center for European Reform, this is the CERR podcast.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the CER podcast.

My name is Sophia Bash, I'm a research fellow here at the CER, and today I'm in conversation

with John Springford and Luigi Scazzieri.

John is a research director

here at the Center for European Reform and Luigi is a research fellow. The CR has just

published a major new report titled relaunching the EU. And John and Luigi have contributed to

the report's chapter on migration and security policies. This is one of the policy areas that the

report identifies as particularly urgently

in need of reform. John, why is it so important that the EU in the future finds better ways to

deal with migration? Well, one of the most obvious reasons is that the migration crisis so far

has been a huge existential threat to the EU as a whole.

The Schengen system of open borders has been temporarily closed because of the sheer number of people.

And the fact that the EU is surrounded by some pretty unstable countries in North Africa and the Middle East

means that it needs to have mechanisms to deal with sudden flows of refugees and migrants.

So, Luigi, could you run us through a little bit what the EU has been doing so far since the beginning of the migration crisis?

What has been a strategy?

Well, so initially the EU was very much in crisis management mode, as it was, one could say, overwhelmed by the numbers of arrivals.

So it tried to, on one hand, share the burden between member states implementing a relocation

mechanism to redistribute arrivals from Greece and Italy, and at the same time closing the

Balkan route, striking a deal with Turkey.

However, there was quite a bit of trouble in implementing the relocation mechanism, and there

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