EU Refugee Crisis: Executive Summary |

This article is about the EU refugee crisis. You will learn what the term EU refugee crisis means, why the EU refugee crisis happened and how the EU countries dealt with the crisis.

EU Refugee Crisis Summary

In general, the EU has a legal and moral obligation to help refugees. This international protection applies in particular to people who have fled their homeland but cannot return for fear of persecution. European member states are responsible for examining asylum applications and deciding who gets protection. If their asylum application is rejected, refugees are sent back to their home country or another safe country by the governments of the European member states.

In 2015, the number of asylum seekers entering Europe doubled to over 1.3 million. The distribution of the refugees and the general handling of the crisis led to many disputes between the EU member states. The EU refugee crisis revealed shortcomings in the European asylum system and called intra-European solidarity into question.

Refugee Crisis EU – Types of Refugees

In general, the term refugee is broad. People who leave their homeland voluntarily or involuntarily are divided into:

• Economic Refugees: Economic refugees are people who leave their hometowns in search of a better standard of living.
• Internally Displaced Persons / Internally Displaced Persons: Internally displaced persons seek refuge within their home country. For example, they flee to another area of ​​their country.
• Environmental and climate refugees: Environmental refugees leave their homes due to environmental changes or natural disasters such as floods, hurricanes or droughts. Climate refugees flee because of the consequences of climate change. For example, when the rising sea level threatens to flood entire villages.

Refugee crisis EU – migration policy

Since the 1990s, the European Commission has issued numerous guidelines for the harmonization of previous national regulations in the area of ​​asylum and immigration.

Schengen Agreement

The signing of the Schengen Agreement in 1985 enabled the abolition of border controls within the European Union. First, Germany, France and the three Benelux countries signed this contract. As a result, they agreed on a common approach to migration, asylum and visa policies. Most EU countries are now part of the Schengen Agreement, but there are also countries that are not members of the EU, such as Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland. EU and non-EU countries work very closely together in this area.

EU citizens can move freely in the Schengen area without border controls. Due to the

EU refugee crisis has some European member states at their borders with others

EU countries reintroduced controls. For example, on September 13, 2015, Germany introduced temporary identity checks at the border with Austria in order to register refugees upon entry. The Netherlands, Austria and Slovakia then decided to introduce temporary border controls as well.

The Dublin Convention

The Dublin Convention is an international treaty that came into force on September 1, 1997 and was a further step in the common European asylum and migration policy. In the meantime, the Convention has been integrated into the «Common European Asylum System» (CEAS). The convention determines which European country is responsible for processing asylum applications filed in the EU.

This is intended to ensure that only one EU state is responsible for an asylum procedure and that asylum applications cannot be made in several EU states at the same time or one after the other. In addition, refugees cannot choose their destination country. As a rule, the EU member state in which the asylum seeker first entered the country examines the asylum application.

Frontex

The creation of the border protection authority Frontex and the establishment of the asylum support office EASO are other important instruments. Frontex is the European Border and Coast Guard Agency. It works closely with the European member states to

protect the EU’s external borders. Your tasks include:

• Risk analysis (monitoring of migration flows)

• Vulnerability assessment (assessment of the readiness and capacity of EU countries to deal with challenges at the external borders)

• On-site interventions, emergency interventions and repatriation campaigns

Refugee Crisis EU – The Year 2015

2015 is the year in which the most asylum applications of all time were made in the European Union. As early as 2014, the number of asylum seekers in Europe rose to over 600,000. In 2015, this number doubled to around 1.3 million. This increase corresponds to an increase of approx. 85 percent compared to the previous year.

Figure 1.: Development of the number of asylum applications in the EU (note: the figures from 1998 to 2015 are annual figures, the figures from 2016 are monthly figures)

In 2015, refugees and migrants came to Europe mainly through three channels:

• Afghans, Syrians, Pakistanis and Africans from sub-Saharan Africa, particularly from Turkey, entered Greece via the eastern Mediterranean route.
• Many sub-Saharan Africans came to Italy or Malta via the central Mediterranean route from Libya on rubber boats.
• Refugees who wanted to get to Spain via Morocco use the western Mediterranean route.

Since 2014, more and more refugees have been using Turkey as a transit country to get to Greece. In the summer of 2015, immigrants chose the Balkan route more often. This greatly increased the flow of refugees.

As a result, Hungary erected a border fence on the border with Serbia. Since the refugees have not been able to enter Hungary since then, they chose a new route via Slovenia and Croatia.

This serious increase in refugees led to catastrophic scenes at the external and internal borders of the Schengen zone and also in the non-Schengen transit countries on the Balkan route. Because it is not easy to provide a large number of people with food, water and shelter. Not every EU country has the necessary resources for this. Greece, Italy, Cyprus and Malta were particularly hard hit in 2015, as the majority of refugees came to these countries via the Mediterranean or from Turkey. As a result, the humanitarian supply was catastrophic.

In addition, the asylum applications were very unequally distributed in relation to the population size of the EU countries. In 2015, 75% of all asylum applications were made for the five Member States: Germany, Hungary, Sweden, Austria and Italy. Consequently, it was not easy to organize a redistribution and a model of intra-European solidarity with which all European member states agreed.

EU refugee crisis – causes (2015)

Reasons for the enormous flow of refugees were:

• The Syrian civil war that has been going on since 2011. War crimes and airstrikes by the US, Russia and Turkey there led many Syrians to flee to neighboring countries. Many people no longer saw any chance of an early end to the war.

• Libya and the Maghreb countries were politically shattered by the «Arab Spring».

• In Afghanistan and Iraq/Syria, terrorist organizations such as the Taliban and the Islamic State (IS) persuaded people to flee.

• The humanitarian supply crises in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and sub-Saharan Africa.

The war in Syria was the main reason for the drastic increase in people fleeing. That is why the majority of refugees came to the EU from Syria or Afghanistan. According to the

UN refugee agency, general supply shortages, a lack of future prospects and poverty led to the refugee crisis.

Refugee crisis EU – Consequences of the refugee crisis

The relationship between the EU member states has deteriorated as a result of the refugee crisis, because the countries could not agree on a common approach. As a result, there was no common solution to the 2015 refugee crisis. In addition, right-wing national and conservative parties have gained strength as a result of the refugee crisis. Nevertheless, the European Union would like to improve the political situation through negotiations and treaties.

measures

The key players in the crisis were the EU Commission, the European Council and the governments of the EU states. Numerous individual measures have been combined within the framework of the Common European Asylum System.

In May 2015, the European Commission developed a migration agenda with proposals for improving European migration policy. This migration agenda was very important in the 2015 refugee crisis. The specific proposals included, for example, the hotspot approach. This concept was based on the idea of ​​a quota-based distribution of refugees across all EU countries. The hotspot approach should particularly help countries that had to register and care for the arriving refugees on site.

Providing humanitarian and development aid

In 2015 and 2016, the EU provided over 10 billion euros to deal with the refugee crisis. This money was used to pay for the basic needs of the refugees, such as clean water, food and shelter.

Protecting the EU’s external borders and saving lives at sea

Search and rescue capabilities in the Mediterranean have been strengthened by the European Union. As a result, more than a quarter of a million people were saved in 2015. Fighting criminal networks was another important measure. For example, the European Police Office opened a new European Center to Combat Migrant Smuggling. Creating safe and legal entry for asylum seekers is very important to the EU.

Relocation, resettlement and repatriation

Thanks to the European Commission, EU member states were able to distribute some 160,000 asylum seekers from Greece and Italy to other European countries by September 2017.

Agreement with the…