IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/palcom/v12y2025i1d10.1057_s41599-025-04900-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The impact of the EU–Turkey agreement on the number of lives lost at sea

Author

Listed:
  • Irene Tafani

    (IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca)

  • Massimo Riccaboni

    (IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca
    University School for Advanced Studies Pavia)

Abstract

The European Union is facing a major challenge: irregular migration. Our aim in this paper is to shed light on a past EU migration policy through the lens of a rigorous analysis of its impact. To this end, we look at the EU–Turkey statement, an agreement reached in March 2016 to contrast irregular migration from Turkey to the EU. Despite the intention to curb migration flows, combat smuggling and improve border security, the implementation of the EU–Turkey deal has raised questions about its effectiveness and humanitarian impact. Drawing on existing literature and empirical data, this study examines the impact of the EU–Turkey statement on migration patterns and fatalities in the Mediterranean. Using a Matrix Completion estimator for panel data, we assess the effect of the agreement by quantifying the number of migrants diverted to alternative routes and estimating the lives lost at sea as a result. Our results show a significant diversion effect from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Central Mediterranean route, which undermines the core objective of the agreement to reduce border crossings. We estimate an increase of around 2000 migrants on the Central Mediterranean route due to the agreement from April to December 2016. We also find a correlation between the diversion effect and the risk of death on the main migration routes, resulting in a net increase of 45 ± 3 lives lost at sea. Our work highlights the unintended consequences of bilateral migration agreements and emphasizes the need for a broader perspective when designing future policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Irene Tafani & Massimo Riccaboni, 2025. "The impact of the EU–Turkey agreement on the number of lives lost at sea," Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 12(1), pages 1-12, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palcom:v:12:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-025-04900-1
    DOI: 10.1057/s41599-025-04900-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41599-025-04900-1
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/s41599-025-04900-1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Susan Athey & Mohsen Bayati & Nikolay Doudchenko & Guido Imbens & Khashayar Khosravi, 2021. "Matrix Completion Methods for Causal Panel Data Models," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 116(536), pages 1716-1730, October.
    2. Amenta, Carlo & Di Betta, Paolo & Ferrara, Calogero, 2021. "The migrant crisis in the Mediterranean Sea: Empirical evidence on policy interventions," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Davide Viviano & Jelena Bradic, 2019. "Synthetic learner: model-free inference on treatments over time," Papers 1904.01490, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2022.
    2. Jack (Peiyao) Ma & Andrea Mantovani & Carlo Reggiani & Annette Broocks & Néstor Duch-Brown, 2024. "The Price Effects of Prohibiting Price Parity Clauses: Evidence from International Hotel Groups," Economics Series Working Papers 1043, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    3. Hainmueller, Jens & Marbach, Moritz & Hangartner, Dominik & Harder, Niklas & Vallizadeh, Ehsan, 2025. "Refugee Labor Market Integration at Scale: Evidence from Germany’s Fast-Track Employment Program," SocArXiv px9ew_v2, Center for Open Science.
    4. repec:osf:osfxxx:brhd3_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Zhentao Shi & Jin Xi & Haitian Xie, 2025. "A Synthetic Business Cycle Approach to Counterfactual Analysis with Nonstationary Macroeconomic Data," Papers 2505.22388, arXiv.org.
    6. Giacomo Battiston, 2022. "Rescue on Stage: Border Enforcement and Public Attention in the Mediterranean Sea," "Marco Fanno" Working Papers 0292, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno".
    7. Sviták, Jan & Tichem, Jan & Haasbeek, Stefan, 2021. "Price effects of search advertising restrictions," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    8. Xiong, Ruoxuan & Pelger, Markus, 2023. "Large dimensional latent factor modeling with missing observations and applications to causal inference," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 233(1), pages 271-301.
    9. Abhineet Agarwal & Anish Agarwal & Suhas Vijaykumar, 2023. "Synthetic Combinations: A Causal Inference Framework for Combinatorial Interventions," Papers 2303.14226, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2024.
    10. Michał Marcin Kobierecki & Michał Pierzgalski, 2022. "Sports Mega-Events and Economic Growth: A Synthetic Control Approach," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 23(5), pages 567-597, June.
    11. Yong Cai, 2022. "Linear Regression with Centrality Measures," Papers 2210.10024, arXiv.org.
    12. Stefano, Roberta di & Mellace, Giovanni, 2020. "The inclusive synthetic control method," Discussion Papers on Economics 14/2020, University of Southern Denmark, Department of Economics.
    13. Denis Fougère & Nicolas Jacquemet, 2020. "Policy Evaluation Using Causal Inference Methods," Working Papers hal-03455978, HAL.
    14. Tomasz Serwach, 2022. "The European Union and within-country income inequalities. The case of the New Member States," Working Papers hal-03548416, HAL.
    15. Anna Rita Bennato & Stephen Davies & Franco Mariuzzo & Peter Ormosi, 2019. "Mergers and Innovation: Evidence from the Hard Disk Drive Market," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) 2018-04v3, Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    16. Susan Athey & Guido Imbens & Zhaonan Qu & Davide Viviano, 2025. "Triply Robust Panel Estimators," Papers 2508.21536, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2025.
    17. Victor Chernozhukov & Kaspar Wüthrich & Yinchu Zhu, 2021. "An Exact and Robust Conformal Inference Method for Counterfactual and Synthetic Controls," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 116(536), pages 1849-1864, October.
    18. Eli Ben‐Michael & Avi Feller & Jesse Rothstein, 2022. "Synthetic controls with staggered adoption," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 84(2), pages 351-381, April.
    19. Ziwei Mei & Zhentao Shi & Peter C. B. Phillips, 2022. "The boosted HP filter is more general than you might think," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 2348, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    20. repec:osf:socarx:3mfzq_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Joe Maganga Zonda & Chang-Ching Lin & Ming-Jen Chang, 2024. "On the economic costs of political instabilities: a tale of sub-Saharan Africa," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 66(1), pages 137-173, January.
    22. Qihui Chen, 2022. "A Unified Framework for Estimation of High-dimensional Conditional Factor Models," Papers 2209.00391, arXiv.org.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palcom:v:12:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-025-04900-1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.nature.com/palcomms/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.