The migration and asylum policy of the European Union is within the area of freedom, security and justice, established to develop and harmonise principles and measures used by member countries of the European Union to regulate migration processes and to manage issues concerning asylum and refugee status in the European Union.
History and overview
The European Union gained authority to legislate in the area of migration and asylum with the entry into force of the Treaty of Amsterdam on 1 May 1999. At the European Council meeting held in Tampere in October 1999, several legislative instruments instituting a Common European Asylum System (CEAS) were proposed. Central to these instruments was adoption of the Dublin II Regulation, a recast of the Dublin Convention, which was an intergovernmental treaty agreed in 1990 outside of the structure of the European Union. By 2005, all legislative instruments of the first phase had been adopted.
Following the presentation of the Policy Plan on Asylum by the European Commission in June 2008, the legislative instruments of the first phase were reformed. The adoption of the recast directives and regulations was completed by 2013. The second phase also saw the institution of a European Asylum Support Office.
Between May and July 2016, the European Commission proposed legislation for a third phase of the Common European Asylum System. This came in the wake of the 2015 European migrant crisis. In September 2020, these reforms were made part of newly proposed Pact on Migration and Asylum. As of September 2023, the legislative instruments were in various stages of adoption.
Guiding principles
Migration policy of the European Union has its roots in the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, an agreement founded on Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The current legal bases for the EU's creation of a harmonised legislative framework on asylum are found in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.
The EU complies with the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, which is the main legislative act establishing the status and rights of refugees. According to the key provisions of the legal act, the main apparatus in the regulation of situations with refugees is the government. They are obliged to preserve the rights and freedoms of internally displaced persons and refugees, but at the same time monitor the creation of such a legal provision that is used by all foreigners who have arrived in a foreign country on a common basis
In order to regulate and control the high number of migrants as a result of the migration crisis in 2015, the EU annually directs its efforts to develop an effective European migration policy. One of the main principles of migration policy is the principle of solidarity, which is expressed in respect for natural human rights, in the coordination of political and social forces in solving the migration issue. The creation of a migration policy and its functioning is based on the collection of data about the current state of affairs, in particular the statistics of the number of legal and illegal migrants who have crossed the borders of the European Union. Despite the fact that migration policy is internally determined, it also serves as an international regulator because it is related to crossing state borders. Accordingly, events at the international level directly affect the development of this type of policy.
In 2020, the European Commission, at the request of the European Parliament, proposed a series of reforms to the existing system through a comprehensive approach anchored on three mainstays: 1) Efficient asylum and return procedures, 2) Solidarity and fair share of responsibility, and 3) Strengthened partnerships with third countries.
Legal framework
Common European Asylum System
Since 1999, refugees entering Europe have been subject to the laws in place in accordance with the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). These laws were established to prohibit European Union Member States from sending individuals back to where they came from at risk of persecution, and to offer international protection to those who were granted refugee status through the course of the law. The latter, however, is still left up to EU Member States the discretion to establish procedures for obtaining and withdrawing international protection.
Asylum Procedures Directive
The Asylum Procedures Directive (APD) establishes a common international protection procedure.