Quotas as an instrument of burden-sharing in international refugee law: The many facets of an instrument still in the making

Abstract

Starting with the year 2015 Europe has come under unprecedented migratory pressure that put into question the very structure of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). In fact, according to the so-called Dublin regime the country of first entrance is responsible for carrying out the asylum procedure leaving it open how the burden that the granting of asylum involves should eventually be shared between the EU Member States. Both the 1951 United Nations Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (GCR 1951) and the CEAS are built upon the implicit assumption that refugee protection should be of a temporary nature, but in reality protection has most often become permanent. In order to avoid excessive burdens for front-line states in Europe and for Europe as a whole, the call for the introduction of burden-sharing mechanisms is becoming ever louder. In this context, quota systems have been presented as ideal problem solution instruments. The European Union has tried to establish such mechanisms but so far all these attempts proved to be insufficient and they met with considerable resistance by some EU Member States. As a consequence, the insufficiencies of the GCR and the CEAS become evident and the international asylum system as a whole becomes imperiled.