The Refugee Crisis and the Reinvigoration of the Nation-State: Does the European Union Have a Common Asylum Policy?

This chapter discusses the European Union’s refugee policy. It shows that the common treaties leave considerable discretion to the individual member countries, which allows them to regulate refugee migration while still upholding international treaties. Member countries have authority over border controls, the processing of asylum applications as well as economic benefits provided to refugees. The differences in refugee flows are so extensive and systematic that the existence of a common EU refugee policy is debatable. The commitments made by the member countries are largely voluntary, and refugee policy is mainly determined at the national level. The cross-member discrepancies strongly signal that the European Union may not be an optimal region for a common refugee policy. A refugee policy should instead be determined at the national level concordant with the regional and local level, where integration measures are implemented in practice.