Martin Wagner

In October 2019, the first multiannual framework kicking off the development of the Common European Asylum System, the Tampere Programme, celebrates its 20th anniversary. Since then, three further multiannual programmes followed: the Hague Programme, the Stockholm Programme and the European Agenda on Migration. Each of the programmes emerged from very specific situations – either dominated by the accession of new Member States to the EU or by an increased inflow of applicants for international protection. During all these years, the vision of Tampere remained untouched; but is it still shared and backed by all of today’s EU Member States? This article is an extract of a chapter taken from the working paper “Harmonising asylum systems in Europe – a means or an end per se?” published in the framework of the EU Horizon 2020 funded research project, CEASEVAL and is accessible at its webpage.

The EU is strongly divided over the question of how to address international protection within the EU. The high numbers of mixed flows arriving at the borders of the EU in 2015/2016, transiting through several EU Member States (MS) and eventually seeking refuge in a handful of destination countries showed how vulnerable the EU's migration and asylum system is.

References to skills of refugees with the aim of creating pathways for protection can be found in the context of the Global Compact on Refugees. But they were (at least initially) also intended to lead to a more purposeful relocation of asylum seekers from Italy or Greece to other EU MS under the EU relocation programme which ran from September 2016 until September 2018. Recently, several publications additionally addressed the question of refugee protection and a possible connection with labour market considerations.

Only a few weeks left until the European Council’s imposed deadline for finding an agreement on the third generation of the CEAS will be due. At the centre of discussions, once more, is the Dublin proposal.

Just recently, discussions on the future of the Dublin Regulation have come to a halt. The Bulgarian presidency reacted by installing an expert group to elaborate a zero draft on the future of the Dublin system. To recall, the Dublin Regulation is one of the core instruments of what is altogether referred to as the “Common European Asylum System (CEAS)”. All key CEAS instruments (the Asylum Procedures Directive, the Qualification Directive, the Reception Conditions Directive as well as the Regulation on the European Asylum Support Office (EASO)), are under discussion again along with the Dublin Regulation. The new legal framework shall find an agreement by the end of the Bulgarian presidency in June 2018.