Activists hold banners protesting the refugee-migration crisis in front of the Parthenon temple on the Acropolis hill in Athens, Greece, on Sept. 5, 2017. Marios Lolos/ Press Association. All rights reserved.The EU
Relocation programme, which aimed to relocate 160,000 people in need of
international protection from Greece and Italy to the other member states over
a two-year period, came to an end on 26 September. After two of years of tortuous
implementation, less than 28,000 eligible people, or 17.5 per cent of the total
planned target, were relocated under the programme.
While
Hungary and Poland, the most outspoken opponents to the compulsory migrant quota
scheme, have failed to relocate a single migrant over the two-year
implementation period, more than 20 member states have actually under-performed
on their legally binding commitments by at least 50 percent.
Considering
that the migrant relocation programme has clearly shown that compulsory
solidarity in such a sensitive area as migration policy is a notion that might
never be endorsed, at least in practice, by most member states, the question
must now be asked whether efforts should still be pursued to renew the existing
scheme in one form or another. And if this is not to be the case, whether the
absence of a compulsory solidary regime will be likely to make any difference
to the EU’s current immigration policy environment.
On the
first question, few qualified observers today would dispute the fact that any
prolongation of the existing compulsory quota system against the will of most
member states would have little chance of producing a more encouraging outcome
than that recorded over the past two years.
Italy and Greece
On the
question of whether the absence of any such scheme could truly impact the
current EU immigration policy regime, there can be little doubt that the lack
of an organised system of re-distribution of crisis-induced migrant arrivals
among all member states would seriously undermine the already sub-optimal reception
capacity and conditions in a handful of member states, most notably Greece and
Italy, which have had to carry most of the burden on behalf of the EU since the
outbreak of the so-called migrant/refugee crisis in 2015.
While flows
to Italy have decreased considerably since the beginning of the year due to the
launch of a range of cooperation measures with Libya and other countries of
origin and transit, they have started to increase again in Greece, despite the
existence of the EU-Turkey
agreement on migration, whose efficiency has tended to oscillate according to
the state of relations and tension between the EU and Turkish authorities.
While it is
now the European Commission’s intention to keep on supporting financially those
member states that are willing to continue relocating eligible migrants outside
of any formal EU scheme, what other options should be put on the table to accommodate
both the need for a functioning responsibility-sharing environment and the
member states‘ reluctance to enter a new compulsory solidarity regime in the
field of migration and refugee affairs?
Past and future
obligations
The first option, that would no doubt be acclaimed by most
member states, would consist of establishing unambiguously a “free and
open market of solidarity”, whereby each member of the bloc would be left to
decide on the level and nature of its inputs into the EU’s migrant solidarity regime.
This would not only consist of relocating eligible migrants but could also include
other forms of support such as financial and technical contributions to the
various EU programmes on the surveillance of the external borders of the Union.
However appealing it may seem in the current period of
profound intra-EU tension in this and other policy areas, one of the problems
with this option is that converting the mandatory nature of the current
relocation system into a voluntary one would be unlikely to make a dent in the
level of pledges experienced to date. This would imply that ‘solidarity’ and
‘responsibility sharing’ are innate concepts, rather than imposed ones, in the
national refugee policies of the member states, when they are clearly not in
most cases. The end result of this option would therefore strongly resemble that
experienced under the foregoing “regulated’ solidarity regime, with some member
states continuing to fare better than others.
This is in addition to the fact that, according to the
decision by the European Court of Justice on 6 September 2017 to overrule
Hungary’s and Slovakia’s objections to the compulsory EU migrant relocation
scheme, any contributions to the surveillance of the EU’s external borders,
which would aim to prevent future
irregular migration flows, can in no way replace a relocation mechanism that is
intended to respond to migrant flows that have already occurred and that are already affecting a number of member
states. Therefore, any contribution to the EU’s immigration control systems and
operations should be considered as complementary to, rather than able to
substitute for the member states’ legally binding obligations under the EU
Relocation scheme.
Revisiting
resettlement
The second
option would consist of encouraging more vigorously direct resettlement from
the countries of origin or transit, thereby reducing somewhat the pressure on those
member states, most notably Greece and Italy, which host some of the EU’s
external borders. Such an initiative might also entail revisiting the
resettlement scheme in its current form by expanding its geographic scope to
reach not just regional but global levels.
The idea
would be to make use of all current and future EU
cooperation and partnership agreements with third countries as incentives to
participate in the resettlement scheme. This would include not only traditional
non-EU host countries, which to date have resettled relatively limited numbers
of Syrians and Iraqis, but also major countries to the south of Europe,
particularly in the Gulf region.
The
third option would relate to the long-stated objective of
facilitating new channels for legal migration to Europe, including through
innovative private sponsorship schemes such as that implemented by Canada. Since 1979, Canada has been
implementing a ‘Private Sponsorship of Refugees (PSR)’ programme that enables
Canadian citizens and permanent residents to provide opportunities for refugees
living abroad to find protection and build a new life in Canada. Based on a
formal agreement with the Canadian authorities, private sponsors undertake to
provide the refugees with care, lodging, settlement assistance and support for
the duration of the sponsorship period.
Non-state actors and another Dublin
One
of the problems with EU resettlement and relocation policies implemented to
date is that their decision-making and implementation processes have invariably
rested with central government authorities alone. At a time of national budget
cuts and deficits, and mounting hostility to the migrant crisis among specific
segments of European society, it is time for the EU to widen the scope of its
resettlement and relocation policies in order to take account of the
willingness of selected non-state actors to contribute substantively to the
funding and implementation of such policies. In this respect, it is worth recording that
the European Commission will be launching next month a major study to explore the
possible benefits and challenges of designing such a scheme in Europe.
The last
option would consist of making optimal use of the forthcoming overhaul of the
Dublin System, which provides for the return of applicants to the member states
through which they first entered the EU and which has clearly placed an
inordinate level of responsibility for the vast majority of asylum seekers on a
limited number of member states that happen to host the EU’s external borders.
The future
Dublin IV Regulation will aim to ensure a fairer sharing of responsibility
between member states by complementing the current system with a corrective
allocation mechanism in cases of disproportionate pressure. In particular, the
new system will automatically establish when a country is handling a
disproportionate number of asylum applications, relative to its size and
wealth. If one country receives disproportionate numbers above and beyond that
reference point, then all new applicants in that country would be relocated,
after an admissibility verification of their application, across the EU until
the number of applications is back below that level. A member state would also
have the option of making a solidarity contribution of €250,000 for each
applicant for whom it would have been responsible under the fairness mechanism,
to the member state that is reallocated the person instead.
Whatever
options are retained in the coming weeks and months, what the above overview
suggests is that EU solidarity policy in the field of migration and refugee
affairs is undergoing a profound state of reconstruction. Solidarity and
responsibility-sharing in this sensitive policy area are likely to draw
increasingly on a more fragmented, unpredictable and bottom up set of
principles and modus operandi, based on voluntary initiatives by member states,
as well as by local authorities, the private sector and civil
society, who are likely to play a growing role in supporting selected
relocation and resettlement measures.