European Duties towards Refugees

Abstract

This article starts with discussing principles for a globally just system of refugee protection to which states contribute either by admitting refugees for resettlement or by supporting refugee integration in other states. Such a system requires relatively strong assurances of compliance by the states involved, which are absent in the international arena. In the international state system, sharing the burdens of refugee protection requires therefore a coalition of willing states who are ready to ‘take up the slack’ resulting from the failure of other states to do what a fair sharing of burdens would require. In the European Union, however, the Member States form a predetermined set with prior commitments and supranational institutions that ought to facilitate effective burden sharing. The article argues that none of the specific features of the recent refugee flows justifies giving priority to deterring access to asylum over burden-sharing. It traces the failure of the EU’s relocation scheme to misconceptions how to determine fair shares, to incomplete prior harmonization of normative standards, and to contradictions between the Dublin Regulation’s principle of assigning responsibility to first countries of entry, on the one hand, and the Schengen principle of open internal borders, on the other hand.