Migrants are less familiar in their new environment in which they temporarily live. They are prone to various social, psychological and emotional trauma in such… Read More
On the European Migration Crisis, Calais, Dublin III and Refugees - Part 2, The Dublin III Regulation
If you have issues of self-loathing, you can read the Dublin III Regulation here.
Each EU Member State is free to set out their own procedures or criteria for dealing with asylum applications. And they do - and they vary quite a bit. What the Dublin Regulations seek to do is harmonise a system for working out which Member State will consider a particular application - but not the outcome of that application.
Without this we could get situations where an asylum seeker turns up in the UK and applies for asylum, the UK Government decides that under their rules the case should be heard by the French, so sticks them on the first train to France. On arriving in Calais the French authorities decide that under French rules the UK should be dealing with the application, so sends the person on the next train back to the UK. And they end up being bounced back and forwards, costing a lot of money, not getting anywhere. Which is bad.
Under the Dublin rules (which cover the EU, Switzerland, Iceland and Norway), it shouldn’t matter which country is working out who should hear an asylum seeker’s application - they should all come to the same conclusion. Similar rules exist for things like jurisdiction in civil cases and choice of law (which I’ve talked about before).
The Dublin III Regulation (officially “Regulation (EU) No 604/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 June 2013 establishing the criteria and mechanisms for determining the Member State responsible for examining an application for international protection lodged in one of the Member States by a third-country national or a stateless person“) is essentially a flow-chart for working out which country should hear a case.
The fall-back position is that:
the first Member State in which the application for international protection was lodged shall be responsible for examining [an application]
But there are a bunch of other situations where a different country might be responsible. Each Member State has to have procedures in place for sending and receiving asylum seekers in accordance with this Regulation. In theory it is all quite sensible, and benefits the UK as most asylum seekers have to go through some other EU state before getting to the UK, meaning they are more likely to have been registered there and so can be sent back if they do get to the UK.
In theory.
Problems with Dublin III
It isn’t hard to see the problems, though. By harmonising the jurisdiction but not the national rules, certain countries may have more favourable application processes than others - encouraging those asylum seekers aware of this to try to ‘play’ the system to end up having their case heard by the country most favourable to them.
Secondly, the system has a bias towards the Eastern/Southern states - those more likely to be the point of arrival in the EU for asylum seekers. These countries may feel treated unfairly because they end up having to process a lot more asylum applications than the Northern and Western countries - which may be in a better position (financially and culturally) to handle applications.
