Protective capacity and responsibility-sharing in the migration and asylum policies of the EU

Abstract

The EU recently experienced two important events in the migration and asylum area which significantly shaped its development. The first was the adoption of the Lisbon treaty, which entered into force in 2009 and introduced Qualified Majority Voting in the decisions taken in this area. Since then there has been no need for unanimous decision making, which led to the second important event: the European Agenda on Migration of May 2015, which is the commission’s proposal on the relocation of refugees from some member states across the whole EU in the name of solidarity and responsibility-sharing. This proposal (later adopted by the Council), contained a relocation key, based on four variables, which aimed at reflecting the capacity of each member state. In this research, I address two key concepts in the field of protection of internationally displaced persons: fairness and acceptability. I contribute to the theory in this area by offering a set of theoretical criteria of fairness which reflect the abilities of states to provide for refugees and asylum seekers. They are based on critical discussion of the determination of protective capacity and assessment of the employment of individual variables. Furthermore, this dissertation provides an alternative model for the determination of protective capacity, which is the cornerstone of any responsibility-sharing mechanism. In addition, I conduct simulations of a hypothetical voting context in the European Union. These simulations of Qualified Majority Voting are used to determine acceptability of potential responsibility-sharing mechanisms in the area of asylum and refugee protection. The results, which represent theoretically fair as well as acceptable solutions, are used to assess the solution chosen by the European Union and to compare the theoretical and the actual outcome.