142 Andrew Geddes
evident at various epochs within Europe’s migration history (Bade 2003);
what is new is the way in which the EU now patterns and shapes aspects of
both the internal and external dimensions of European migration policy
(Boswell & Geddes 2011; Geddes 2008; Lavenex 2006). This makes things more
complicated in analytical terms because the EU is not a state. However, it has
acquired some state-like features as its policy role has grown and as it has
developed its own political system. Since the Lisbon Treaty came into force
in 2009, migration and asylum have become ‘normalised’ policy areas. This
means that member states share power with EU institutions such that the
European Parliament is a co-decision-maker with the Council of Ministers
(that uses a qualif ied majority voting system) while the Court of Justice
(CJEU) can now issue rulings on preliminary references from lower courts
in the member states seeking clarif ication of the relationship between EU
and national law (Acosta Arcarazo & Geddes 2013). These EU competencies
do not cover all aspects of migration and asylum policy. They tend to focus
on stemming ‘unwanted’ migration f lows, such as those of asylums seekers
and irregular migrants. The EU has no competence to determine the number
of migrants to be admitted; this remains a matter for the member states.
The EU is a highly developed political system in its own right and cannot
be reduced to a discussion of its member states as though it were simply
acting as an agent of the member states. The EU has its own separate and
independent institutions operating at supranational level, such as the
Council of Ministers, the European Commission, the European Parliament,
the Court of Justice, the European Council and the Central Bank. These
institutions operate within a unique system of supranational governance:
unique in the sense that there is no other international organisation that
possesses law-making powers, which the EU does; supranational in the
sense that it exists ‘above’ the member states and is separate from them;
governance in the sense that it is a complex, multi-level system and can-
not be analysed by relying entirely upon the familiar reference points of
comparative political analysis or international relations. This multi-level
governance in the EU challenges a vocabulary of political analysis that takes
the state as its point of reference. Schmitter (1996: 132) notes that:
Our language for discussing politics – especially stable, iterative,
‘normal’ politics – is indelibly impregnated with assumptions about
the state. Whenever we refer to the number, location, authority,
status, membership, capacity, identity, type or signif icance of political
units we employ concepts that implicitly refer to a universe featuring
sovereign states.