A migrant in each house: The EU is changing the rules of asylum

The European Union has decided to change the rules of asylum, according to the European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans, who announced this at a press conference on Wednesday. This is due to the continued migration crisis. However, despite last March’s summit, where Turkey managed to agree on a distribution mechanism of migrants, it is still not working.

Current regulations

Under the current Dublin rules, refugees can only apply for asylum in the first country they arrive in. In 2015, after the massive flow of refugees from Syria and other Middle East countries, most of the refugees had the legal right to seek asylum in Greece, while they sought to go to Germany. Greece's economy, whilst also being undermined by international creditors, will not stand the burden of maintaining millions of Arabs, Kurds, and Afghans.

EU’s Offer

The European Union has proposed the introduction of a refugee quota distribution mechanism in other European countries. Hungary, Poland, the Baltic countries, and the UK have refused these plans. Supporters of the plans are Germany, France, Greece, Spain, and Italy - countries where currently most of the migrants have settled. In September 2016, the plan for the redistribution of more than 160,000 migrants from Greece and Italy was approved; so far, only 1,100 people have been redistributed.

Turkey’s plan has stalled

A unique plan proposed by Turkey has also stalled: for each refugee the Turks take from Greece, they will send one new refugee to the EU. The reasoning behind the plan is the regulation of the migration process and an alternative to the chaotic flow of migrants in the form of the centralized distribution of refugees. The first aircraft with refugees arrived in Germany on 4th April, with the next flight scheduled for Friday. It is clear that a continuation of such a trend in the near future will make the prospects of solving this problem unattainable.

Incurable liberalism

The EU’s policy on refugees is based on the liberal ideology, which does not take into account the Islamic identity of the newcomers to Europe. This led to large-scale clashes with the local population and the growth of Euro-skepticism, but despite this, the EU cannot abandon liberalism. This means that the number of migrants will only rise. The only EU proposal is to replace the "irregular migration" with "regular" migration, which shows that the existing European mechanisms are not able to cope with the problem of migration, which is, ultimately, burying the European Union in its current form.

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A migrant in each house: The EU is changing the rules of asylum