The European commission is just that the old ‘Dublin rules’ accomplish not work and have to be replaced. But only a fair division of responsibility can make the system acceptable to Europes nationsMore than a million refugees entered the European Union final year. Their arrival overwhelmed border controls designed for a more settled era. Member state passed the parcel to member state,exposing the limits of Europe’s ability to cooperate in the face of the most meaningful movement of migration of the 21st century. Every national government in the EU, as well as the union itself, and is still struggling with the consequences.
It is therefore neither unexpected nor unreasonable that the European commission will shortly make proposals to fix Europe’s bust system. Reports this week propose that the commission wishes to scrap the so-called Dublin regulation,dating from the 1990s, under which refugees were required to lodge their asylum claims in the first country of the EU that they enter, and enabling them to be returned there from elsewhere in the EU. In practice this regulation placed unbearable administrative and political burdens on Greece and Italy,where most of the refugees arrived, passing across Europe’s open internal borders, and to the richer countries of the north. The system broke down in 2015 when the scale of migration prompted Angela Merkel to waive Germany’s just to send thousands of migrants back to southern Europe.
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Source: theguardian.com