“The right to asylum shall be guaranteed with due respect for the rules of the Geneva Convention of 28 July 1951 and the Protocol of 31 January 1967 relating to the status of refugees and in accordance with the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.” Article 18 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights outlines the European Union’s legal framework for its asylum policies that have come under intense scrutiny and political pressure since the height of the significant number of refugees trying to literally reach the shores of the continent from conflict zones in Africa and the Middle East. While refugee numbers went down again to pre-2015 levels and below due to considerable political interventions, the political debate has not disappeared and continues to heavily influence European politics including major shifts towards the right end of the political spectrum in many member states. In an article for the “In Focus” section of Political Insight (September 2018, Volume 9, Issue 3) I looked at recent developments in Europe’s “refugee crisis”.
The conflicting interests between national politics and the aims to a joint political approach towards the issue at EU level are part of the problems that have partly contributed to the continuing challenges. The Dublin Regulation according to which the country of entry is responsible for handling the process of an asylum application proofed difficult for the member states that due to their geographic location at the Mediterranean Sea were facing the majority of arrivals of refugees from the neighbouring conflict regions in recent years.
The smaller cartograms in the graphic demonstrate how according to UN Refugee Agency’s (UNHCR) estimates mostly Greece, Italy and Spain were the main destinations of Mediterranean sea arrivals in the past five years (2018 shows figures for the first half of the year). During the height of the so-called ‘Refugee crisis’ in 2015/16 Greece became a major destination (856,723 arrivals in 2016), while Italy showed consistently high numbers of arrivals in the tens of thousands and Spain seeing a significant increase in 2017 and 2018.
These shifting patterns reflect political interventions which are often a response to pressures from national-level politics. The events in 2015/16 saw an agreement between the EU and Turkey to stop the crossings towards Greece, while subsequently a more hard-line approach by Italy led to routes shifting towards the Spanish shores as well as the Spanish exclaves on the African continent.
The overall toughened response also resulted in refugees taking ever more dangerous routes which explains why, despite declining overall numbers, the number of dead or missing people stays in the thousands and was consistently rising as a share of refugees between 2015 and 2018.
The European-wide efforts to secure the outer borders have led to an increased perception (and reality) of a ‘fortress Europe’. The Dublin Regulation aimed to find a joint EU approach proved unworkable not least due to the lack of solidarity that it contains. Western and Northern European countries are the least likely countries of arrival for asylum seekers, while they are populous and equally important prosperous member states. Southern European economies, in contrast, are still recovering from the impact of the economic crisis. Being responsible for arrivals of hundreds of thousands of refugees is an enormous challenge which puts considerable pressure on many small communities that were the first point of arrival, such as Greek islands in the Aegean. While these communities responded with a huge amount of solidarity and effort, the symbolic images of refugee camps helped to feed a European-wide narrative of the political right that refugees and asylum seekers are a burden rather than a vulnerable group of people that have the right of protection according to international conventions.
In addition to a fortification of the outer borders, individual states have increased efforts to secure their own national borders through increased controls leading to the ongoing fragmentation instead of a joint responsibility for these most vulnerable group of international migrants (though the political rhetoric in recent years has often blurred the boundaries between forced and voluntary migration).
The current number of asylum applications across Europe demonstrates the highly unequal distribution of applications, not only in absolute numbers but also in relative terms when comparing this to the overall distribution of people as shown in the main maps of the graphics. According to the Dublin agreement asylum applications can be deferred back to the point of entry, while agreements to allocate asylum seekers across the participating states have so far not lead to an equal number of applicants per country. Of the then most populous countries in Europe, Greece continues to have the highest number of applications (5.3), while most other countries apart from very small states receive around 2 applications per 1,000 people. All Central and Eastern European countries remain just at or far below the 0.5 mark in the statistics.
In addition to these statistics it also needs to be kept in mind that these numbers do not reflect the number of asylum seekers that will end up living in these countries, as these are not approved applications. Here the difficulty of individual countries in handling the bureaucratic process becomes even more evident: In 2017 Germany, who received the largest number of applications, made final decisions on approximately 30,000 cases (granted or rejected), while the Mediterranean countries were hardly able to process a fraction of their applications (Greece 500, Italy 385, Spain 10). A European-wide approach seems inevitable.
Finding a fair system of allocating refugees across the states remains a major challenge in European politics. Times of crisis, just as it was the case in economic difficult times some years ago, do not provide the basis for finding consensus demonstrating solidarity between governments. At the same time do critical situations like these demonstrate the weakness of a lack of consistent policies and the problems that often arise when European-wide solutions always only work with the least-common denominator that all member states can agree on. Whether the principle of consensus can continue to guide EU politics, or whether making more difficult decisions through qualified majorities are necessary to keep the Union functioning, remains to be seen. The approach towards asylum seekers and refugees has yet again demonstrated that at the moment national interests stand above European solidarity which had led to Europe becoming the fortress that it is at the moment. A debate about solutions for better integrating refugees in European societies as well as tackling the underlying causes in the countries of origin must return to the centre of politics, rather than the current discussion about preventing refugee flows reaching the continent.
Will politics be able to overcome these current divisions? Against this stands a substantial number of volunteers from the civic society across Europe who exercise the Union of peace, solidarity and democracy that the founding principles of the Treaty of Rome advocated.
Bibliographic details for the original publication that this blog entry is based on:
- Hennig, B.D. (2018). In Focus: Europe’s ‘refugee crisis’. Political Insight 9 (3): 20-21.
Article online (Sage)
The content on this page has been created by Benjamin Hennig. Please contact me for further details on the terms of use.