The principle of solidarity in the context of the common European asylum system

Abstract

Migration will mark nine years since a calamity hit in 2015, which irrevocably altered the European Union’s posture both outwardly and domestically. Alas, it has returned to the forefront of EU leaders’ concerns with an increase in arrivals since 2016. Called into question once again by the ongoing failures of the EU migration policy that has not been able to prevent tragedies such as the one that claimed the ‘lives of hundreds’ when a vessel sank in June 2023 in the southern Greek waters. Prompted by the uprising of the Arab Spring in 2010 and conflicts in Syria and Afghanistan, European external borders were reached by a detected amount of “1.83 million illegal crossings” in 2015 only (European Parliament, 2023). Although this fell to almost 14,000 crossings in the first month of 2024, the migratory routes still pose a risk for which EU Institutions are required to find a fix from past lessons (FRONTEX, 2024). Migration falls within restricted competence of the EU, driven by the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) that establishes common norms for member states (MSs) to follow while ensuring equal treatment of asylum applicants regardless the European state reached. However, this system of directives and legal instruments failed to counter the urgency to a sudden influx, protracting asymmetrical consequences to states (EU Commission, 2024a). Turkey and Italy were identified as the most prevalent and life-threatening. Many would venture farther into the EU, passing into the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. As the Western Balkan route started to gain precedence; Hungary erected temporary barriers along its border with Serbia, prompting a new push towards Croatia with the purpose of seeking refuge in Serbia and claiming asylum in the EU. Eventually, the most heralded achievement of a borderless region under Schengen area turned into a ‘fortress’, with several countries following suit in border checks because of “secondary movements” of refugees (Tsourdi, 2020). The upshot created political schism with southern countries burdened with the entry and processing of asylum claims, bearing also responsibility for detecting and impeding undocumented secondary movements, mounting border controls, and countries such as the Visegrád group (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia) refusing entry of irregular migrants, with other countries pushing back refugees. Ultimately, the core of CEAS is the Dublin regulation, which established a ‘first-state entry norm’ in which countries are to oversee the administrative aspects of admitting migrants and ensuring their safety while processing their asylum applications for relocation in another country. However, since it was founded in the 1990, it fell short to predict the disparities in the number of migrants received by every country and the administrative capacities. Furthermore, it was not designed to foresee that migrants would travel deeper into the EU based on their preferred state. The strategy was based on ‘legal harmonization’ across states and lacked an administrative component to manage asylum applications and admission processes.