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Europe's Refugee Crisis Europe’s Refugee Crisis PRESSURE POINTS AND SOLUTIONS WILL JONES, ALEXANDER TEYTELBOYM, AND DALIBOR ROHAC APRIL 2017 AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE A Executive Summary urope’s refugee crisis beginning 2015 is the mechanisms include tradable quotas and two-sided E largest population movement the continent has matching algorithms that would allocate refugees to seen since the end of the Second World War. The individual countries or substate units. Similar mech- EU’s asylum system was not designed to deal with anisms are used in other contexts, such as to match large, irregular influxes of asylum seekers. In its cur- kidney donors and recipients or hospitals and medi- rent form, it places unreasonable strains on countries cal residents. on the EU’s external border, such as Greece and Italy. Such a system would respect the wishes of asylum To a large extent, the legal basis for moving toward seekers while ensuring that the member states and a common asylum policy already exists. The reason local authorities are in the driving seat for decisions why it has not translated into effective policy has over numbers and characteristics of the refugees to do with the fact that a number of member states that they will accommodate. Because security con- view burden-sharing mechanisms as unacceptable siderations have become central in political discus- encroachments on national sovereignty. sions of the refugee questions, a European asylum Various institutional mechanisms can help the policy needs to be accompanied also by measures EU overcome the resulting public good problem, that would prevent radicalization of incoming asy- driven by a lack of commitment to absorbing spe- lum seekers, which represents a far more serious cific numbers of refugees, absence of incentives to risk than the commonly discussed ISIS infiltration resettle, and an overall lack of coordination. Such of refugee flows. 1 Europe’s Refugee Crisis: Pressure Points and Solutions WILL JONES, ALEXANDER TEYTELBOYM, AND DALIBOR ROHAC ith more than 1 million people arriving on its to asylum policy. The reasons for this situation, we Wshores in 2015 and almost 400,000 in 2016, argue, are not legal or technical, but political. Because Europe’s refugee crisis is the largest population move- EU member states do not know how many asylum ment the continent has seen since the end of the seekers ought to be allowed into Europe, if any, and Second World War. The crisis has been profoundly to which countries they should go, the refugee crisis destabilizing to the European Union (EU) and politics has led to a reintroduction of temporary border con- in individual member states. The perceived failure of trols within the Schengen area and to new border public authorities to control the flows of asylum seek- fences and barriers. These disagreements reflect the ers and migrants across the European continent has substantial collective action problems in achieving given an unprecedented boost to anti-immigration a genuinely common European asylum policy, with and nativist political parties. Even in countries, such as incentives stacked against individual countries step- Poland and the United Kingdom, which are relatively ping up their efforts. unaffected by the influx of refugees, the events came The EU would be unable to cope systematically to the forefront of public debates and played a role in with a repeated influx of 2015 proportions. Another swaying important elections and votes, including the iteration of the refugee crisis would shift leaders’ UK referendum in June 2016 on EU membership. attention away from other long-term strategic chal- The crisis is not over. On the Central Mediterra- lenges and force the bloc back into crisis-fighting nean route between Libya and Italy, migration might mode. It is unthinkable for the EU to become return as weather conditions continue to improve in a major geopolitical player, project strength, or the spring. The European Commission’s current pol- actively engage with its neighborhood if it cannot icy is premised on a series of agreements with non-EU provide a public service as elementary as a function- states to prevent asylum seekers from traveling to ing border protection and rights-respecting asylum Europe and effective readmission on a vast scale, policy. A return to the unmanaged flows of 2015 which may prove fatal if carried out. For example, it would also give new impetus to reactionary nativ- remains an open question whether the EU’s current ist politics, amplifying the already significant risk of deal with Turkey, which has nearly halted the influx the EU’s uncontrolled implosion. of asylum seekers to Greece, is sustainable given the This report explains how the EU can overcome rise of authoritarianism in Turkey and its deteriorat- the current political deadlock and create a system ing relations with the EU. of asylum protection that solves the incentive prob- Although the EU has taken some meaningful lem facing European governments and reconciles the strides, particularly in strengthening its border pro- divergent views of member states about their own tection force, it lacks a truly coordinated approach humanitarian obligations. Several options, including 2 EUROPE’S REFUGEE CRISIS WILL JONES, ALEXANDER TEYTELBOYM, AND DALIBOR ROHAC tradable refugee quotas and a centralized clearing- Turkey and Greece, along the Eastern Mediterranean house matching refugees to countries, are available. route. More than half of the 885,386 illegal border Furthermore, the paper addresses questions of secu- crossings in 2015 (compared with just below 51,000 rity and terrorism, which have been associated with in 2014) were made by Syrian nationals, followed by the refugee influx in the popular imagination. significant numbers of Afghans and Iraqis. The over- Whether or not the risk of ISIS fighters and other whelming majority did not stop in Greece but con- terrorists infiltrating refugee flows is credible, address- tinued onward to other EU countries, most notably ing it has become a political necessity. Smarter security Germany. The journey took asylum seekers through controls and screenings of incoming asylum seekers the non-EU countries of Macedonia and Serbia and can mitigate such risks and ought to be an integral part then through Hungary and Austria toward Germany. of any functioning asylum system. That should not In 2015, Hungary’s construction of a razor-wire fence come at the expense of addressing the more pressing on its border with Serbia diverted the refugee flow concern of radicalization of asylum seekers in Europe, into Croatia and Slovenia. particularly if member states continue to seriously mismanage the asylum process and the integration of asylum seekers into local labor markets. In 2015, a total of The Crisis of 2015 1,255,685 first-time The European refugee crisis that accelerated in 2015 asylum applications had been in the making for a long time. By April 2013—less than two years into Syria’s civil war—the were made in the EU. UN High Commissioner for Refugees had registered more than 1 million Syrian refugees in surrounding In 2015, a total of 1,255,685 first-time asylum countries.1 Notwithstanding humanitarian efforts, applications were made in the EU. More than half their access to basic services, education, health care, (307,000) of the first-instance decisions (592,000) and labor markets was and remains limited. In Tur- were positive.4 As in previous years, member states key, for example, the vast majority of refugees from faced an uneven demand for asylum. More than Syria and Iraq live outside of refugee camps and bear 441,000 of them were made with German authorities, their own housing costs.2 compared with only 225 filed in Estonia, 260 in Slove- Given the proximity of the European continent, nia, and 270 in Slovakia. the acceleration of refugee inflows into the EU was Contrary to the common perception of Hun- only a matter of time. In 2014, Frontex, the EU’s gary as a purely transit country, Hungarian authori- border agency, registered more than 282,000 illegal ties received the second-largest number (more than border crossings, compared with around 107,000 in 174,000) of first-time asylum applications. However, 2013.3 Most used the Central Mediterranean route, only 3,420 first-instance decisions were made, of arriving in Italy. In 2014, there were more than which 505 were positive, making the success rate of 526,000 first-time asylum applications across the asylum applicants in Hungary the second lowest in EU, with German authorities receiving the largest the EU, after Latvia. number. In 2016, well over 1 million first-time asylum appli- The situation escalated in 2015. The absolute num- cations were made in the EU. However, following ber of crossings along the Central Mediterranean the March 2016 deal between the EU and Turkey, the route fell somewhat, but unprecedented numbers numbers of illegal crossings along the Eastern Med- of asylum seekers crossed the Aegean Sea between iterranean route plummeted. Overall, fewer than 3 EUROPE’S REFUGEE CRISIS WILL JONES, ALEXANDER TEYTELBOYM, AND DALIBOR ROHAC 182,277 such crossings5 were made in 2016—most of The Political Fallout them in the beginning of the year—compared with more than 885,000 in the previous year. In the eyes of her critics, Angela Merkel’s famous Besides the EU’s pledge of €3 billion to support “welcome” for Syrian asylum seekers in September refugee programs in Turkey, the commitment to 2015 is largely to blame for the severity of the refugee “re-energize” Turkey’s accession negotiations with crisis in Europe. the EU, and the prospect of visa-free travel, the agree- However, that account overlooks that the influx of ment stipulated that all “irregular migrants” arriving asylum seekers into Germany was already underway from Turkey to Greece would be returned to Turkey.
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