So much promise, so little delivery: evidence-based policy-making in the EU approach to migrant smuggling

The 2020 New Pact on Migration and Asylum confirmed the con- tinuity of the EU and its Member States’ largely repressive approach to migrant smuggling. Over the last few years, evidence-based inputs coming from the local level – and particularly from actors responsible for the implementation of anti-smuggling measures – have led to the assessment and review of the related EU penal framework. Yet, notwithstanding the emergence of several critical elements, calling for a re-definition of such framework – such as migrants accused of being smugglers and the criminalisation of humanitarian actors –, policy outputs have not altered the existing legislation. By disclosing the interactions between policy-makers, in a bottom-up perspective, this article explores the role of evidence in the (failed) reform of the EU framework, with a view to contribut- ing to a new institutionalist understanding of the EU politics of evidence-based migration policy-making