EU Asylum Reform Contents

Introduction: Reform of the Common European Asylum System

By the end of 2015, the number of individuals forcibly displaced from their homes exceeded 60 million, the largest number ever recorded by the UN Refugee Agency. In the same year more than a million people—a quarter of them children—risked their lives crossing the Mediterranean to Europe and more than 1.2 million asylum applications were made in EU Member States, mainly in Germany and Sweden.1 The Commission expects migration to be “one of the defining issues for Europe” for decades to come, with the EU remaining both a place of refuge for individuals fleeing war or persecution and a beacon for those seeking a better life.

The common European asylum system—a work in progress since 2003—provides a framework for managing the refugee crisis but many regard it as broken, or seriously weakened as a result of unilateral action taken by Member States to protect their borders, restrict access to their territories and make it more difficult to obtain protection. The Commission believes that there is too much fragmentation and too little mutual trust in Member States’ asylum systems and that this has created “pull factors” which draw individuals to Member States with higher asylum recognition rates and better reception conditions. It has put forward a package of reforms which is intended to reduce the scope for differential treatment, depending on where an application for international protection is made, deter “asylum shopping” and secondary movements between Member States, and establish effective burden-sharing and solidarity mechanisms to ease the pressure on frontline Member States.

The UK participates in some, but not all, of the EU’s asylum laws. All the Commission’s asylum reform proposals are subject to the UK’s justice and home affairs opt-in, meaning that the UK is under no obligation to participate—it will only be bound if the Government decides to opt in. Full Parliamentary scrutiny of the Government’s opt-in decisions is important. There can be little doubt that a decision to opt into all of the Commission’s asylum reform proposals would have a substantial impact on the UK’s asylum system. Whilst such an opt-in may seem unlikely, given the UK’s patchwork participation in current EU asylum measures, the legal, practical and political feasibility of opting into some of the proposals but not others is far from clear. It is also unclear whether the UK could continue to take part in existing EU asylum measures, such as the Dublin III Regulation which allocates responsibility for examining applications for international protection made within the EU, if it does not opt into the new replacement measure.

Even if the Government were to recommend that the UK should not opt into any elements of the asylum reform package, the Commission’s attempt to establish “an integrated, sustainable and holistic migration policy, based on solidarity and fair sharing of responsibilities, which can function effectively in times of calm and crisis” is likely to have an impact on the UK’s own asylum system, both in the period while the UK remains a member of the European Union and after it has left. As the situation in Calais demonstrates, the asylum policies and systems in place in other Member States have an important bearing on the flow of asylum seekers and irregular migrants seeking to enter the UK.

The Commission presented its first set of asylum reforms in May. Those proposals sought to streamline the existing Dublin procedures and include a new “fairness mechanism” designed to ensure a more equitable distribution of asylum seekers amongst Member States. They would also transform the European Asylum Support Office into the EU Agency for Asylum, giving it a stronger mandate to monitor the overall functioning of the common European asylum system, and develop the EU’s asylum database (Eurodac) into a broader migration management tool.2

We have recommended that the Government’s opt-in decisions should be debated together on the floor of the House and that the debate should take place within the three month period available to the Government to decide whether or not opt in. The Government has yet to schedule a debate and will now be unable to do so before the first opt-in deadline expires on 3 October.

This Report concerns the second (and final) set of asylum reform proposals published in July. The proposals set out changes to substantive EU asylum laws determining who qualifies for international protection, the procedures applicable to asylum claims and how asylum seekers are to be treated while their claims are being examined. They also include a new EU resettlement framework which is intended to reduce the flow of irregular migrants to the EU and ease the pressure on frontline Member States by providing safe and legal pathways to the EU for individuals in need of international protection. We recommend that there should be a similar opt-in debate on these proposals.

Each of our Report chapters identifies questions which we consider to be relevant to the opt-in debates. An overarching concern is whether the reforms proposed achieve the Commission’s objectives of establishing “a more humane, fair and efficient European asylum policy” and ensuring that the EU “takes on its fair share of the global responsibility to provide a safe haven for the world’s refugees”.3 We also look further ahead, inviting the Government to consider the impact that harmonised EU rules on asylum would have on the UK once the UK has left the EU.

The final chapter of our Report includes a submission by the International Rescue Committee on the proposed EU Resettlement Framework.

Measures recommended for debate and the opt-in deadline

Measure	Opt-in deadline	Date of debate recommendation
Reform of the Dublin rules: Regulation establishing the criteria and mechanisms for determining the Member State responsible for examining an application for international protection	1 November 2016	15 June 2016
Reform of the Eurodac database: Regulation on the establishment of “Eurodac” for the comparison of fingerprints	1 November 2016	15 June 2016
Reform of the European Asylum Support Office: Regulation on the European Union Agency for Asylum	3 October 2016	6 July 2016
Reform of EU rules on who qualifies for international protection: Regulation on standards for determining who qualifies for international protection, a uniform status for refugees or individuals eligible for subsidiary protection, and the content of the protection granted	1 December 2016	14 September 2016
Reform of EU asylum procedures: Regulation establishing a common procedure for international protection in the European Union	8 December 2016	14 September 2016
Reform of EU rules on reception conditions: Directive laying down standards for the reception of applicants for international protection	8 December 2016	14 September 2016
Establishing an EU resettlement framework: Regulation establishing a Union resettlement framework	4 December 2016	14 September 2016

1 See UNHCR’s Global Trends report for 2015.

2 See our earlier Reports on the first set of EU asylum reform proposals: Sixth Report HC 71-iv (2016–17), chapter 1 and chapter 2 (15 June 2016) and Seventh Report HC 71-v (2016–17), chapter 1 (6 July 2016).

3 See our Thirty-third Report HC 342-xxxii (2015–16), chapter 3 (11 May 2016) on the Commission Communication, Towards a reform of the Common European Asylum System and enhancing legal avenues to Europe.

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16 September 2016