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What is the Dublin Regulation?
It is a mechanism for deciding which Member State should process an asylum application. The basic rule is that it is the country where the asylum seeker first entered the EU, but other factors that may affect are whether she already has family members in the Union or has already started an application in any country.
The regulation applies both in the EU and in Switzerland, Norway and Iceland. Among other things, criticism has been given to the fact that southern European countries, such as Greece and Italy, are forced to process an unreasonable number of applications because this is usually where refugees arrive for the first time.
What does von der Leyen want to change?
It is not clear. It only says that the Dublin Regulation should be abolished and replaced by a new European migration management system, “a mechanism reinforced by solidarity.”
This should be interpreted as a relief to Greece and Italy and to take greater responsibility for each other. However, it is extremely difficult to say how this will happen. Mandatory quotas have been tried before, and systems in which countries that do not accept refugees can “buy themselves for free” have even been discussed.
None of this has been considered to work because several Member States, mainly in Central Europe, always flatly refuse to accept refugees, regardless of the system.
What happens now?
What everyone is waiting for, and as von der Leyen referred to, is the EU’s so-called “migration pact”, which refugee commissioner Ylva Johansson is expected to present on September 23. Then, if not before, we will get the details of what the Commission chairman revealed after his opening speech on Wednesday.
But if the Commission had found some magic formula that solves all the problems, it is enough to wait too long. When Ylva Johansson was recently asked about the content of the pact, she replied as follows:
– When I present my proposal, nobody will be happy.
