Building European Asylum and Immigration Policies and a European Border Service
DESPERATE PEOPLE, DESPERATE EUROPE
Geopolitical turmoil, wars, conflicts, poverty, natural disasters and climate change pushed more than a million people to come to Europe in 2015 alone.1 The total number of new arrivals in this period represented a less than 0.2% addition to the total EU population but the situation has caught the European Union and its most exposed Member States unprepared and unable to cope with the challenge.
In 2015, 81.3% of all arrivals to Europe came through Greece, many of whom will have transited via Turkey and the Balkans. Germany and Sweden alone processed 800,000 and 190,000 asylum claims respectively.2 Shockingly, in the same year, 3,695 people are known to have drowned or remain missing following tragic attempts to reach Italy or Greece by sea.
Such trends look set to continue in 2016. In the absence of a united European system to manage the external border and a comprehensive European Asylum and Immigration Policy, the most exposed Member States are left almost alone to cope with the arrival of large numbers of people and their transit through or settlement in their territories.
The current Dublin System, determining the Member State responsible for the examination of an asylum request, has become unworkable in light of the concentration of people arriving at the Union’s external border. Frontex, the EU agency in charge of coordinating European border management, has proven unable to make a difference given its narrow mandate and its reliance on limited personnel and resources voluntarily made available by Member States.
As Member States including Greece, Slovenia, Austria, Hungary and Croatia respond by installing physical border fencing and internal borders are partially or totally closed in various places, the Schengen arrangements have been tested to their limits and are now put into question. Further pressure was added following the Paris attacks in November 2015, which led France to reintroduce border checks as part of the national state of emergency.
The combination of security concerns and the unprecedented numbers of people moving into and across Europe has led to mistrust between Member States about the fulfilment of Schengen obligations.