The European Council's 2008 ‘Immigration Pact’ has been touted by its main protagonist, the French government, as a turning point in EU migration policymaking. In one respect at least, the French are not exaggerating. The Pact represents a challenge to a key assumption underpinning European integration, namely that communitarised policymaking procedures are the best means of achieving truly common policies: Paris presented the intergovernmental Pact as a means of succeeding where communitarised decision-making has failed – in achieving the goal of a coherent common migration policy. However, analysis shows the French claims to be largely unfounded: although the European Council might theoretically have played a useful role here, in practice its efforts will add little to the achievement of a truly common policy.