The purpose of this article is to explore the process of managing European migration policy and the forms in which it takes place within the Euro-Mediterranean relations. To this end, the article supports the idea that the involvement of the southern Mediterranean countries is intimately linked to the construction of the external dimension of European migration policy. Yet this external dimension is not without ambiguities, which explains in many respects the fact that cooperation with these countries has been diluted in a global process of securing the European Union’s external borders. The article then looks at the shortcomings of this management in such a way to underline that cooperation with the southern Mediterranean countries has failed to overcome the uncertainties of the external governance of the European Union’s migration policy.