The EU’s contribution to climate change migration governance in the wider Mediterranean: leadership or trompe-l’oeil?

It is widely acknowledged that the increasing magnitude and frequency of extreme weather events are exposing people in the wider Mediterranean to adverse impacts. The EU joins those claims that global policy initiatives are needed to address the vulnerabilities produced by climate change. However, so far it has been unable to deliver responsible engagement. The paper detects the latest EU policy initiatives and critically explores the EU leadership in setting up climate change migration governance. The analysed documents request the involvement of multiple stakeholders such as EU, experts, UN, IOM, NGOs, civil society organisations, local authorities, etc. But this is a long and controversial process in which the EU leadership is not to be taken for granted. Despite EU declarations in multilateral contexts and latest documents, time is not ripe yet to address the political impact of climate change on mobility. The normative immobility of EU legal framework concerning climate migrants and the recognition of their protection suggests that at EU level there is much ado for nothing. Despite the European Parliament more advanced stances towards the promotion of refugees affected by climate change, the recognition in the European Green Deal of the link between environmental factors and migration, and the identification of climate change as a major global challenge for migration flows in the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, there is a hard way towards the recognition of environmental and climate change as having an impact on forced mobility. A legal framework is not at hand and environmental/climate migrants are still excluded from protection. Climate change migration faces the constraints of a complex transboundary problem that involves several actors and has to rely upon experts and scientists’ knowledge. Vulnerable people due to climate change are acknowledged increasing policy attention, but climate migration governance remains a work in progress.