The European Asylum Crisis: Towards Collective Reception and Fair Quotas
To The Point | May 2015
Currently, more refugees than ever before are dying on their way to safe European ports. At the same time, the ever-increasing number of asylum applications necessitates joint European action to relieve pressure from the heavily affected asylum systems in some member states. As a response, refugees from crisis-torn countries whose citizens are frequently granted refugee status could be admitted directly from third countries through collective processing. This includes asylum-seekers from Syria, Eritrea and Somalia. However, in order to ensure a fair allocation of asylum-seekers, the EU would first have to agree on a proportional quota system. The SVR Research Unit proposes a multi-factor model which is capable of calculating a fair reception quota for every member state based on its economic strength, population, size of territory and unemployment data. To demonstrate the country-specific impact of the proposed allocation, this SVR Research Unit’s To The Point applies the model to a hypothetical European contingent of 10,000 refugees in order to calculate fair reception quotas for each member state.
