Trauner, Florian. "Asylum Policy: the EU's 'crises' and the looming policy regime failure". Journal of European Integration, Vol.38, No.3 (2016): 311-325.

Trauner, Florian. "Asylum Policy: the EU's 'crises' and the looming policy regime failure". Journal of European Integration, Vol.38, No.3 (2016): 311-325.

• The lack of coordinated policy response by the EU to the refusal of Eastern European states to comply with migration laws in the wake of the 'European refugee crisis', itself occuring during a slow recovering from the effect of the 2008 financial crisis, has led to widespread public claims that the EU is incapble of finding a solution to these simultaneous economic, social, and political crises (311).
• The 2008 economic crisis and its debilitating aftermath in Europe have affected the experiences of refugees in Europe, as cash-strapped national governments have failed to fund their asylum systems to the required degree, leading to an essential breakdown of the national system for processing asylum claims (312-313).
• Additionally, increased levels of unemployment and poverty following the 2008 crisis have exacerbated societal tensions, leading to increased numbers of violent attacks on immigrants and refugees. States often lack the funds or political will to protect refugees from these attacks (313).
• The cornerstone of the EU asylum policy regime is the 1990 Dublin Convention, which holds that the country which first receives the asylum claim of a refugee is responsible for that person. This allocates most responsibility for migrants claiming asylum on peripheral EU countries (313).
• Attempts have been made, beginning in 1999, to bring the asylum programs of different EU countries into harmony to ensure equal treatment of asylum-seekers regardless of country of first registration. Despite these attempts, large national variations in quality of asylum still exist (313-314).
• The 2008 economic crises only deepened divisions between countries in the quality of asylum regime, for example the complete breakdown of the asylum system in Greece. This case was so extreme as to result in the termination of transfers to Greece due to an utter lack of capacity guarantee their rights (314).
• The existence of these large gaps in quality of asylum has further undermined the Dublin Convention regime meant to harmonize asylum policy, leading to the suspention of asylum-seeker transfers to Greece in 2011, Hungary in 2012, and Bulgaria in 2014 (314).
• The suspension of transfers to certain EU countries due to extremely poor quality of asylum-processing systems actually creates perverse incentives for anti-immigrant governments to abuse and deny rights to asylum-seekers, as doing so will result in the suspension of their legal responsibilities to accept refugees under EU law (314).
• The disproportionate pressure on certain states to enforce asylum policy has led to claims by peripheral EU states that internal members have not been sharing the burden appropriately, while countries with high numbers of asylum-seekers, like Germany, have made similar claims about underperforming or lax peripheral member states (315).
• The peripheral states, in particular Italy, have threatened to deliberately let more asylum-seekers pass through their borders without registration in order to pressure internal member states for additional financial support. Peripheral states or transit states will often deliberately fail to record necessary details of asylum-seekers so that they cannot be transferred there from other EU states (315).
• The existence of severe budgetary constraints created by the 2008 financial crisis actually gives anti-immigration governments, like those in Eastern Europe, more political space to deny rights to asylum-seekers. Under crisis conditions, anti-immigration governments can decide to fund some programs while slashing funds for asylum-processing programs, all while claiming such actions are necessary due to budgetary constraints (314).
• The first generation of EU laws on asylum policy were developed prior to the Lisbon Treaty, meaning that the European Council was able to enforce its restrictive policies on the EU with little resistance from disempowered liberal elements. The right of co-decision granted to the generally liberal European Parliament under the Lisbon Treaty resulted in laws after 2005 being less restrictive. The Council, however, refused to compromise on many positions, prefering not to update EU asylum policy to agreeing to liberal reforms (316).
• The Council successfully used the budgetary constraints created by the 2008 financial crisis to argue against liberal reforms to asylum law, contesting that even small improvements in the conditions of refugees would collectively cost millions of Euros, costs which the EU could not afford (316).
• As a result of the general unwillingness of the European Council to compromise, combined with the perceived salience of budgetary constraints, the new EU asylum law adopted in 2013 featured very few changes, mostly in the form of vague guarantees that special measures could be taken in event of crisis (316-317).
• Despite an institutional inability to secure a fundamental change in asylum policy due to ideological divisions between the European Parliament and European Council, the EU has adopted other measures such as financial and operation assistance to overwhelmed countries to manage the refugee crisis (317).
• The EU has made certain amounts of funds available for the Greek government, other badly affected governments, and certain NGOs to assist with the costs associated with the Syrian refugee crisis. Some failing national capabilities have also been taken over by Frontex, whose budget has been greatly increased since 2005. This has allowed for limited cost-sharing despite no explicit cost-sharing being provided in EU asylum law (317-318).
• The EU has also approved the creation of voluntary migrant relocation programs, allowing states with lots of asylum-seekers to move these people to other EU countries provided that receiving countries agree. This has had limited effect due to general refusal of states to accept more asylum-seekers, but it does share the burden (318).
• As the refugee crisis became more intense in the Mediterranean during 2015, more peripheral EU member states began to openly abandon their obligations under the Dublin Convention. This has led to a complete breakdown of the transfer provision of the Dublin Convention, to the degree that the Germany government announced it would no longer attempt to return asylum-seekers through this mechanism due to lack of cooperation from other EU states (319).
• The EU has managed to agree on some measures for reform in 2015, with the European Commission pioneering a plan for the forcible resettlement of 160,000 asylum-seekers from Italy, Greece, and Hungary to other EU member states. They also intend to improve relations with source countries to promote easier and more rapid deportation of rejected applicants. Frontex and other agencies will also be given a larger role, helping peripheral states while also guaranteeing that proper registration proceedures -- allowing migrants to be identified and deported back to the peripheral states if they try and leave -- are implemented (319-320).
• The loudest objectors to this plan were Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, and Czechia, all of which protest any relocation of asylum-seekers, especially Muslims, to their territories. These countries were outvoted in the European Council and the plan was passed, but they have now created a crisis by illegally refusing to implement these policies (320).
• Even if implemented by all EU member states, this new plan contains two major risks of failure. First, the financial and technical support provided to peripheral EU states may be too little to cover the costs of actually supporting asylum-seekers, resulting in continued lack of legal protection for asylum-seekers in Southern Europe. Secondly, failure by peripheral states to handle asylum-seekers could led to an overburdening of the internal states and a breakdown of the redistributive and burden-sharing system (321).