The EU and the Refugees: The Way Forward
The EU and the Refugees: The Way Forward

Author(s): Michal Šimečka, Benjamin Tallis, Vít Beneš, Petr Kratochvíl
Subject(s): Government/Political systems, Security and defense, Politics and society, Migration Studies, EU-Accession / EU-DEvelopment, EU-Legislation, Asylum, Refugees, Migration as Policy-fields
Published by: Ústav mezinárodních vztahů
Keywords: EU; Refugees; migration policy; solidarity; securitization; Common European Asylum Service; EU Immigration Code;
Summary/Abstract: The EU has always existed in the dual world of strongly professed universal values and its ability to accommodate the mundane interests of its member states. However, this – at times fruitful – tension has recently come under so much strain that it threatens to bring down not only the EU's always fragile foreign policy consensus, but even the most fundamental freedoms on which the EU has been built, such as the free movement of people, and which it has come to stand for in the eyes of its populations. The first blow came with the Eurozone crisis, and the second with the still growing migration malaise. But while the crumbling solidarity during the economic crisis and the negotiations with Greece could still be explained away as a result of rational economic calculus, the current crisis does not offer any such comforts. The two fundamental tenets of the integration ethos – universal values and particular state interests – seem to be at odds as never before. The ultimate question which is so often posed today is whether the EU should comply with the still powerful state-centric push and simply build up the barriers again or whether the time has come for the EU to fulfil its higher calling and take action based on its broader humanitarian obligations.

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