PhD vacancy: The role of EU agencies in the management and guarding of borders in the EU (UM/Law)

The role of EU agencies in the management and guarding of borders in the EU.

This PhD project will investigate the role of EU agencies in the management and guarding of EU borders, which is the explicit mandate of FRONTEX, the EU’s Coastal and Border Guard Agency. But, also other agencies such as the EASO, the European Asylum Support Office, Europol, and Eurojust are concerned with border management. One of the challenges within the EU border management is the legal demarcation between competences between the EU and the Member States and the coordination amongst the EU institutions and the national authorities. Member States are not able to provide adequate responses to border control and thus transnational solutions are required. To this end, EU agencies are asked to provide responses based on expertise, knowledge and depoliticisation. This, however, depends on their mandate, resources, social organization, governance and authority, which this PhD project aims to investigate. Equally, this leads to an intricate interplay between national and European authorities. This raises questions in relation to the division of legal competences, tasks and responsibility and the corresponding accountability of EU institutions, EU agencies and national authorities; possibly leading towards a shared or composite administration. 

The researcher will be based at the Faculty of Law of Maastricht University, and undertake a 12-month secondment at the Department of Social Sciences and Business, University of Roskilde, Denmark.

Supervision team:
SupervisorProf. Ellen Vos, Professor of European Union Law, Faculty of Law, Maastricht University  
Co-supervisor: Associate professor Dr. Sevasti Chatzopoulou, MSc & PhD, Department of Social Sciences and Business, University of Roskilde, Denmark
Both supervisors have researched widely the agencification of EU executive governance.
External supervisor: to be determined
Secondment: 12 months at the University of Roskilde.

For more information, see: https://limes.maastrichtuniversity.nl/vacancies/role-eu-agencies-management-and-guarding-borders-eu-0

Deadline for application: 14 June 2020.