Refugee Protection and Solidarity

Abstract

Abstract This book aims to define the duties that EU member states have towards each other in the field of refugee protection. It employs the analytical tools of normative political theory to bring moral clarity to a highly divisive debate on both principles and political feasibility. The central normative problem prompting this project arises from the discrepancy between the commitment to solidarity enshrined in EU law and the reality of asylum provision. The events related to the so-called EU ‘migration crisis’ of 2015/16 have exposed this discrepancy and questioned the nascent notion of EU solidarity at its core. The crisis of the EU asylum system, in fact, is not just a symptom of failed integration. It is also a distinctively moral failure that has brought to the fore a distributive dilemma and exacerbated already existing differences between member states. Despite the clear manifestations of a breakdown in cooperation, the current debate on the ethics of refugee protection does not provide much guidance on the normative constraints that should apply to the allocation of responsibility for reception and protection in a regional organization like the EU. There is a broad literature on state duties towards refugees and asylum seekers and an entirely separate scholarship on duties of solidarity between EU member states, dealing mostly with distributive social justice. This book addresses systematically the question of how international duties towards refugees relate to interstate duties inside the EU, bridging the gaps between the commitment to solidarity and the reality of EU asylum policy.