Last week the bodies of over 70 refugees were found inside an abandoned lorry in Austria. Such tragic discoveries have happened at painfully frequent intervals in Europe in recent years.
While governments have rightly condemned and promised action against people traffickers, they would also do well to look closer to home — at European policy towards asylum seekers and refugees; in particular what has come to be known as the Dublin system that has led those desperate enough to embark on the dangerous route to Europe, on further perilous journeys across the continent.
The Dublin regime began to take shape nearly 20 years ago, but has been honed over time. It effectively means the European country in which a person’s claim for asylum is first lodged is the country that must be responsible for the asylum claim.
Few exceptions
While there are provisions that would allow countries to put the rule aside, and allow refugees to stay no matter where they arrived in Europe, in practice exceptions are rarely made, says Judith Sunderland, Associate Director for Europe at Human Rights Watch.
The system has meant that countries on the geographic border of Europe, notably Greece, Italy, Malta and Bulgaria, receive thousands more claims than do their inland neighbours.
Making the situation even worse is the poor economic plight in which those countries have found themselves, with social welfare programmes for their own populations already stretched to the limit, and limited resources to be able to make the provisions for those seeking refuge.
In Greece, the situation has been becoming increasingly desperate, with authorities struggling to provide shelter for the thousands who have landed on its islands.
Critics have noted that the country — which receives extra funding from EU resources as a result of its refugee crisis — has spent far more on detention facilities and immigration controls than on the refugees themselves.
Last year, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that conditions at one border post breached the European Convention on Human Rights’ prohibition of “inhumane and degrading treatment.”
Hostile conditions
Conditions elsewhere remain hostile: Hungary has backtracked on a recent threat that it would no longer abide by the Dublin doctrine and take deported refugees back but it continues to pursue plans for a high fence along the border with Serbia to stop the large numbers of refugees who have been entering the EU through that route.
Exacerbating the situation is the reluctance of all European countries to step up to the mark.
“The Dublin doctrine rests on a premise that is completely false, which is that all EU countries fully respect and implement EU laws and procedures and conditions. We are seeing huge disparities among EU countries on how asylum seekers are treated on arrival, the reception conditions they find themselves in, what procedures are in place or even the recognition of refugee status by nationality,” says Sunderland.
The huge difference in standards means it is not just border countries that face a huge number of asylum claims but others such as Germany, where as many as 7,50,000 people could make asylum claims in 2015 alone.
The huge differences in the treatment of refugees across Europe have extended the misery of many. While some turn to traffickers to help them reach a country where they believe they have a better chance, those who do reach their favoured country still face hardship.
There is currently an 18-month period within which a person can be deported back to the country first arrived in, which means people have to endure great hardship to stay.
“There are thousands living in hiding waiting for (this period) to expire,” says Meran Estefanos, a human rights activist and radio journalist based in Sweden.
“I’ve seen whole families living in hiding — the children not even being able to go out to play for fear of being found by authorities…they may arrive in Italy but what are they to do? There is no language connection…no integration…no welfare provision…what are you supposed to do but move on to other countries?”
“The Dublin regulation obliges refugees either to suffer from homelessness and imprisonment in the country they arrive in, or go the illegal way to a have a life of dignity somewhere else,” says Tobias Klaus of Pro Asyl, a German group representing NGOs, unions, churches and other organisations involved in protecting refugees in the country.
Drain on resources
He adds that on top of the humanitarian problems caused, it has also proved a huge drain on EU resources and bureaucracy, with funds spent deporting people to other European countries that could have been used in supporting refugees and communities instead.
For now, however, change has been slow. Responding to calls from nations facing the greatest number of claims the European Commission has proposed a quota system to relocate 40,000 Syrian and Eritrean refugees who landed in Greece and Italy.
However, its impact will be limited, with countries such as Britain, Denmark and Ireland able to opt out and others already opposing the move.
Elsewhere, however, there are glimmers of hope. Last week Germany announced that the National Immigration Authority will change the guidelines for its employees, no longer requiring Syrian refugees to be returned to the European country they first registered in.
While not a step change — Pro Asyl’s Klaus points out that decisions are at the discretion of officials who might still permit deportations to countries where conditions are better, such as Sweden or Denmark — Germany’s move is a signal that the much needed debate about Dublin might finally begin to happen, says Sunderland.
“I certainly think that in recent years there has not been a time as ripe for the kind of debate that needs to take place. We have inched closer to a revision of Dublin,” she says. She is hopeful that even if the Dublin system remains, the EC could bring in mechanisms that could run parallel to it and effectively undermine it. “The real problem is political will,” she says.
(This is the first in a series on Europe’s migrants crisis.)
