Asylum policy - Opt-outs make reform a cop-out

The European Commission this week unveiled an overhaul of the European Union’s asylum policy in an effort to share the burden of hosting refugees more evenly among member states.

At first sight, that objective sounds fair and reasonable as it will ease the burden on frontline member states such as Greece, Italy, and Malta, who have had to cope with tens of thousands of refugees arriving on their shores.

However, there is one major flaw, in that the UK will be able to continue to operate the current rules under the Dublin Regulations that allow member states to send back refugees to the EU country where they first arrived.

It can hardly be a coincidence that such a derogation is being allowed within weeks of the EU membership referendum in Britain.

“Nothing will be forced on the UK?.?If it wants to continue on the existing system, it can,” Frans Timmermans, commission vice-president, said in Brussels as he unveiled the first serious attempts to reform the Dublin system, which was agreed more than two decades ago.

The derogation has all the hallmarks of a desperate attempt by Brussels to ensure that the UK remains within the EU. It has already been greeted gleefully by senior government figures in London.

Yesterday, the Financial Times quoted a British government source who said: “These new plans give Britain the best of both worlds by retaining the right to remove asylum seekers to EU countries — but without opting in to the Schengen area’s burden-sharing scheme.”

The new policy represents a reform rather than a scrapping of the Dublin rules, an important distinction as it allows specially agreed opt-outs already built into EU treaties for Britain, Ireland, and Denmark, that allow those member states to choose whether to participate or not in EU rules on border checks, asylum and immigration.

Britain has already made it clear that it will not operate the new rules and, in such circumstances, it is hard to imagine how any Irish government could operate them either, given the free movement of people between the UK and Ireland — particularly between the Republic and the North.

In any event, the new rules are as much a cop-out as an opt-out in that, far from burden sharing, they will force poorer countries such as Poland and Hungary to implement them as, unlike Ireland and the UK, they do not enjoy special arrangements under EU treaties.

The sanction proposed by the commission is also grossly unfair to less wealthy member states. Failure to comply with the new rules would result in fines of €250,000 per refugee, described as a ‘solidarity contribution’ to those EU states that agree to take their allotted quota.

This brutal sanction takes no account of a member state’s ability to pay. It must also be legally dubious.

Although the European Court of Justice routinely issues fines to countries that breach EU law, introducing fines for not taking refugees is bound to be challenged.