In the last couple of months, the media headlines have been dominated by the presence of Europe’s refugee crisis and the effects it has had on the different states calling it “one of the greatest humanitarian crises the globe has ever known.” Migration in and out of Europe has taken place throughout history but the current migration crisis has two major differences from past migrations; the first being the large number of migrants arriving into Europe at an increasingly fast rate straining EU’s financial, political and social institutions and secondly most of the refugees are from culturally distinct countries such as Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan making it harder for them to integrate into Europe’s society.
The current migration crisis which started in summer 2015 was triggered by the ongoing civil war in Syria which displaced 22 million Syrians. Conflicted mounted in other African countries as well such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Eritrea this started the massive influx of refugees into Europe.
It has sparked fierce debate between the states which hold different views on how to deal with the crisis and consequently take in different numbers of asylum seekers creating an unequal distribution of refugees within the EU due to geographic location. Italy, Hungary and Greece receive the most migrants, therefore they face a disproportionate burden. Each country reacts to the crisis depending on their national interests, Germany has been one of the most welcoming countries in order to battle their demographic decline and need migrants to support their aging population, England and France have high fertility rates and hence have made their policies towards migration very difficult.
To be considered a refugee, the person must be fleeing persecution, under threat or in any kind of danger that does not allow him to reside in his country of origin. The refugee has the right to request asylum in a safe country. Asylum laws differ in each European state because the EU considers immigration law a matter of national sovereignty. For most states, if one is not considered a refugee they are deported to their country of origin. Solving the migration crisis is out of the EU’s hand, solving the conflicts in the countries of origin would be an unrealistic goal therefore the EU needs to better its policies to manage the situation. To put things into perspective, the EU is one of the most prosperous places worldwide with a population near to 750 million so the presence of one million refugees can not only be governable but also convenient. How can Europe use it’s previous immigration policies to help shape future solutions for the current refugee crisis? Firstly, we are going to analyse the impact of the previous proposals such as The Dublin Regulation, Schemes elaborated by the EU Commission, as well as, agreements with non-member states. Followed by different proposals inspired from theses previously mentioned and investigate the possibility of using a non-member state’s policy as a model for better alternatives.
II. Previous laws and proposals: Effects and current measures
Dublin Regulation and negative reactions towards acceptance of immigrants
The Dublin Regulation is an EU law which came into force on the 1st of September 1997 that determines which EU member state is responsible for examining an asylum application. It declares that the member state which first receives the asylum seeker is the state which is then responsible for their asylum claim. Once a decision is taken regarding the asylum seeker’s claim, the chosen member state can either accept or refuse their entry, if rejected they may not restart the process for another country and are obliged to return to the state whereby they first entered the EU or where they were found by the police if they entered the EU irregularly. In other words avoiding that an asylum seeker applies to multiple member states.The Dublin regulation is only valid for European countries which have signed it and is derived from Article 31 which states that refugees should not be punished for illegally entering a country if they are directly arriving from a country where they were under threat. It was meant to centralize the examination of asylum application in a few member state, prevents asylum shopping and prevent “orbiting” asylum seekers, who are shut down from member state to member state. The latest reform made to the Dublin regime is the Dublin III Regulation which came into force on 19th July 2013, it kept the principles from the previous versions, extending the treaty to more member-states and a few non-member states. However in today’s current refugee crisis the Dublin Regulation has failed to be a sustainable immigration policy and led to the unequal sharing of responsibilities, regarding this matter, between member states.
With the Dublin Regulation in place, the refugee crisis mostly affects mediterranean countries, such as Italy and Greece, due to their geographic accessibility through their exposed coastal borders. In late 2015, just over 150,000 people landed on Italian coasts, as well as, more than 700,000 individuals arriving to Greece. These latter, have the two biggest public debts in the Eurozone and do not have the financial capacity or institutional strength to support the refugees crisis, alone, anymore. Not only does this negatively impact the affected member states but, their failure to provide welfare to asylum seekers. is also a violation of refugees human rights, according to the European Convention on Human Rights.
Furthermore, the Dublin Regulation makes it easy for EU member states, who do not want refugees, such as Hungary, Slovakia, Estonia and Czech Republic, to avoid accepting asylum applications and rather send them back to the EU member states in which the seeker first entered.
Germany, on the other hand, took the initiative in assisting struggling countries by using the “sovereignty clause”, it voluntarily assumes the liability of processing asylum applications that wouldn’t have been theirs under the regulation’s criteria.
According to the Dublin system, asylum seekers cannot choose the country where their application will be processed. The different EU legislations and lack of full implementation, makes certain countries more attractive to asylum seekers than others, therefore, gives them incentive for illegal asylum shopping. Many refugees have become aware of that fact and tend to avoid registration and fingerprinting to move to the country where they wish to get asylum. This “has created an imbalance of distribution of asylum seekers with disproportionate pressure on the favoured destination countries.” [1] such as Germany which in 2015 received more than 476,000 asylum applications. [2]
B. European Commission schemes proposals and Agreements
Due to the mentioned complications and failed attempts of The Dublin Regulation the European Commission has proposed a new agenda on Migration which aims to combine both internal policies of relocation, to relieve political and economic burden for pressured member states (Italy and Greece) , and external policies of resettlement, to ensure migrants enter the EU safely and legally.
In order to relieve pressures for Italy and Greece in September 2015 the Justice and Home affairs Council adopted a scheme proposed by the EU Commission to relocate 160,000 asylum seekers from these two member states to other ‘safe countries of origin’. Under this scheme, asylum seekers who have the highest chance of having their applications accepted are relocated from Italy and Greece, where they have first arrived, to other member states. The European Commission estimated it would take two years but as the 8th of November 2016, 6925 people have been relocated, mostly from Greece to the Netherlands, France, Portugal and Finland.
The European Resettlement Scheme adopted in July 2015, agrees on the resettlement of 22,000 refugees from outside the EU. Basically, it discourages migrants to use trafficking networks and instead use a legal and safe pathway to Europe including an agreement between the EU and Turkey. A Joint Action Plan between these two parties, addressing the root causes leading to the massive influx of syrian refugees, one of its priorities is to provide temporary protection of those lastly mentioned. The 1:1 mechanism , which states that for every Syrian refugee returned to Turkey from the Greek island, another will be resettled in the EU, has been a success in improving the situation of irregular migrants to the Greek Islands. A statistic published by the European Commission shows that since the implementation of the EU-Turkey agreement, the arrivals of refugees into Greece has decreased from 10,000 in November 2015 to a couple hundred in September 2016. As well as a significant drop in the number of refugee deaths in the Aegean Sea.
In order to achieve the targets set by both sides of this agreement, they assume the commitments towards one another. Today, Turkey, is perceived as a “safe third country”, in other words, a third party country deemed safe where asylum seekers are granted temporary protection as promised. By signing this agreement, this non-member state, holds the responsibility of registering migrants with appropriate documents, facilitate access to public services like education and employment, strengthen its interception capacity on the coastal borders as well as cooperate with involved member states to decrease irregular migration activities. As of the 10th february 2016, after careful revision of visa policy, Iraqis will not be able to obtain their visas at the borders of Turkey. The establishment of a special unit on migrant smuggling within the Turkish National Police took place on the 1st february 2016. Their objectives are to stop irregular departures, arrest smugglers and rescue migrants at sea. This measure of prevention taken by the Turkish government, shows their implication and determination in fixing the Syrian refugee crisis ongoing so far.
On the other side of the agreement, the European Union has a series of commitments they promise to fulfill. The EU aims to increase funds for Turkey in order for them to better cope with the challenge presented by the numerous amounts of Syrian refugees. The funds would be put towards strengthening Turkey’s capacity to combat migrant smuggling networks, enhance education & health infrastructures and ease economic integration for the refugees to launch their self-sufficiency during their temporary stay. As well as facilitate the cooperation between EU member states and Turkey to organize the journey of irregular migrants towards countries of origin. 90 million euros from the EU humanitarian budget have already been allocated by the European Commission to provide assistance to refugees in Turkey.