On Monday 23.07. the interior and foreign ministers from 8 EU member states agreed to install a "stable mechanism" for migrants rescued in the Mediterranean Sea. Lucas Rasche writes why some member states should take the lead in relocating asylum seekers and what the "Alliance of the Willing", called for by German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, could look like. more
As the EU’s current legislative cycle is coming to an end, this policy paper analyses the four major proposals put forward to revise the Dublin Regulation. It argues that two points of contention stand in the way of solving the EU’s ‘relocation puzzle’: varying preferences for a permanent or temporary relocation mechanism and contradictory views on the voluntary or mandatory nature of such a mechanism. With no compromise in sight, the paper proposes a Franco-German initiative. more
On 17 September 2015, the European Parliament voted on the emergency relocation mechanism for asylum seekers arriving in Italy and Greece. This policy brief illustrates the geographic rift among MEPs from different member states and shows how the vote divided political groups on the left and right. These cleavages still undermine negotiations to reform the Common European Asylum System. more
Should the Common European Asylum System accommodate various degrees of integration? With member states unable to agree on asylum reforms, flexible integration has become a temping alternative. Drawing lessons from the ongoing downgrading of refugee protection in the opt-out country of Denmark, this blog post warns that differentiated integration is not a good solution for the EU asylum policy. more
Last week, Nicole Koenig joined world leaders and security experts at the 55th Munich Security Conference. This policy position summarises her four key takeaways on the EU, transatlantic relations, great power competition and emerging challenges. It lists a range of unanswered questions that will have to be monitored in the course of next year. more
