The uncertain role of the EU countries in the Syrian refugee crisis.

• Author: Havlova, Radka
• Position: Essay

Common Asylum and Migration Policy of the EU

The common asylum and migration policy of the EU can be in general traced back to the 1950s when the EC (European Community) member states adopted the Geneva Convention of 1951 on the Status of Refugees, which defined the basic rules and principles of refugee protection. The efforts to embrace a common approach to asylum and migration policy were first reflected in the Schengen agreement signed by five of the ten member states of the EC in 1985, which provided for the removal of internal borders among Schengen member states. Creation of the borderless Schengen area was facilitated by the fact that the EC as such was at the time, when the agreement was adopted, much smaller and therefore much more flexible and easier to manage than the current EU-28. The EU accepted the Dublin convention of 1990 as a part of the Schengen system which provided for the basis of the common asylum policy. The EU common asylum policy was further modified in the Dublin II Regulation of 2003 and the EURODAC Regulation, which established an all-EU database of fingerprints of asylum seekers and refugees entering the EU. (2)

The Dublin Regulations are particularly important in the contemporary Syrian refugee crisis, as they stipulate that the asylum seekers should apply for asylum in the first country of entry to the EU, and if they are detained in another EU country they should be returned to the first country of entry. This country should take care of the asylum seekers including processing of asylum applications. (3) This provision of the Dublin regulations thus puts enormous pressure on the EU border states, such as Italy, Greece or Bulgaria, as they are the ones that should be in accordance with this regulation dealing with the majority of asylum seekers and refugees. These states therefore tend to protect their external borders with the non-EU member states to secure a reduction in the number of asylum seekers and refugees entering their territories. Various EU member states frequently adopt restrictive policies aimed at banning illegal immigration and make it more difficult for asylum seekers and refugees to settle in these countries, (4) some of them also plainly reject a high number of the asylum applications. According to the Eurostat statistics, some countries such as Estonia, Lithuania and Portugal declined all of the asylum applications in 2015, while "Latvia, Hungary and Poland recorded first instance rejection rates above 80%." (5)

The EU established the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) in 2010, in view of these national efforts to fight the rising number of asylum seekers and refugees in the EU and to promote implementation of the common European asylum system. (6) The EASO created a new Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF), which partially took over the functions of the European Refugee Fund (ERF), which was a tool designed to enable sharing of the costs of refugee burden within the EU and which was allocated 630 million Euros in 2008-13. (7) The AMIF is designed to distribute a total of 3.137 billion Euros in 2014-20 to support the management of asylum and refugee flows within the EU and to promote the common asylum and immigration policy of the EU. (8) Its specific objectives include support of the Common European Asylum System by application of uniform EU legislation in the field of asylum and refugee policy, support of legal migration and integration in the EU countries, as well as effective return strategies, fighting illegal migration, and funding activities of the European Migration Network. A specific condition of the AMIF is the solidarity within the EU countries to fairly participate in bearing the burden of the common asylum policy of the EU, "making sure that EU States which are most affected by migration and asylum flows can count on solidarity from other EU States." (9)

Other efforts to strengthen the common asylum policy of the EU included revisions and changes in the common asylum policy to improve the so called "Dublin system." In 2013 the European Commission reviewed the common asylum policy via EC regulation No. 604/2013, called the "Dublin III Regulation," which again called for registration of asylum and refugee seekers in the first country of entry within the EU area, with the main objective of preventing submission of multiple asylum applications by asylum and refugee applicants. (10)

Despite these efforts to make the common asylum policy more effective, international organizations such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) or European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) consider the current system a failure with respect to providing fair and effective protection of refugees and asylum seekers. This is because not all asylum seekers or refugees are able to access and correctly implement the asylum procedure, and are therefore at risk of being returned to their country of origin, in which they could be subject to persecution or to the country of the first entry, which also might not be in an adequate position to take care of them. (11)

The common asylum policy has also failed to work appropriately due to the ineffective asylum system in Greece and due to the lack of willingness of the EU member states to cooperate on issues related to the refugee crisis and coordinate their refugee and asylum policies. Despite the efforts of the EU to promote a common asylum policy within the EU and to equally distribute the asylum and refugee burden among the EU member states, different member states of the EU remain attractive to different degrees for the refugees due to the varieties in their economic development, cultural, religious and ethnic structure, and national legal systems. Therefore, even before the outbreak of the Syrian refugee crisis, there were intense discussions about how the EU should deal with applicants for asylum and refugees. The most regularly debated question is the fair sharing of the refugee burden by all member countries.

The most frequently proposed solution is the so called "tradable refugee quotas" (TRQ). The TRQ system would enable the common asylum policy to work efficiently by including a market principle in refugee allocation. As mentioned above, there are several economic models that discuss how to implement effective TRQ systems; however, their basic idea is the same. In theory, such a system would enable all countries of the EU to participate fairly in the refugee crisis by either directly bearing the costs of the refugee crisis (i.e. contributing financially to a special fund which would cover the financial costs connected with the refugee crisis), or by granting asylum to refugees (which would include reception, accommodation, administrative procedures and integration of refugees). Advanced versions of the TRQ system (proposed for example by Fernandez-Huerta Moraga and Rapoportz) are also based on a mechanism which enables the matching of refugees to their desired destinations, and enables countries to choose the desired type of refugees (based on, for instance, vocational skills, education, legal status, etc.). Should the EU be able to successfully implement this system of TRQs, such a system could allow for a plausible calculation of the country-specific costs of accommodating asylum seekers and refugees, and thus generate a cost-effective solution of the refugee crisis by minimizing the total costs for a given number of refugees or by maximization of the number of refugees for a given budget constraint. Such a system would also take into account refugees' preferences concerning destinations and simultaneously take into account countries' preferences. (12) However, as we shall demonstrate later in our analysis, the EU has so far not been able to manage the TRQ to secure a fair share of the refugee burden by all EU member states.

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The European Union and Refugees from Syria in EU Countries

Before examining the position of the EU and its member states regarding the Syrian refugee crisis let us briefly look at the overall policy of the EU towards the crisis in Syria. Syria has traditionally been an important partner of the EC/ EU, since the EC signed a Cooperation Agreement with Syria in 1977, and Syria has intensively cooperated with the EC/EU within the Euro-Mediterranean partnership since 1995. In the current Syrian crisis, the EU is considered by many to be a strong supporter of the opposition forces in Syria. (13) As mentioned in the Elements for an EU Regional Strategy for Syria and Iraq as well as the Daesh Threat, EU "continue(s) to support the moderate opposition, including the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (SOC), but not excluding any other constructive domestic civil society or political forces." (14) Moreover, Syria remains a top priority of the EU under Federica Mogherini, High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice-President of European Commission, and the EU continues to support a diplomatic settlement of the crisis in Syria in cooperation with the United States and the United Nations, notably using economic tools such as the imposition of an embargo on selected representatives of the Syrian regime or an oil embargo.

The EU was already aware of the growing importance of the refugee crisis in 2014, being specifically discussed at the Conference on the Syrian Refugee Situation -Supporting Stability in the Region- in Berlin in October 2014. The Berlin Communique adopted at this conference put emphasis on promoting stability and peace in Syria by simultaneously addressing the economic, security and humanitarian needs of the Syrian population and refugees from Syria in host countries, including preparation of conditions for the safe return of refugees. The question of refugees was in addition addressed in the new comprehensive strategy of the EU called Elements for an EU Regional Strategy for...