Chapter 10 - Solidarity in EU asylum policy: From an emergency-driven approach to the fair sharing of responsibility

The EU’s migration policy is also at the centre of Evangelia (Lilian) Tsourdi’s contribution ‘Solidarity in EU asylum policy: From an emergency-driven approach to the fair sharing of responsibility’. Here she states that the absence of solidarity and fair sharing in the legislative design and implementation of the EU’s asylum policy is glaringly salient. This piece argues that rather than a refugee crisis (i.e. a perceived fundamental lack of capacity to deal with a certain numbers of protection seekers) we are actually dealing with a governance crisis, one that has laid bare the inadequacies of the EU asylum policy. Tsourdi explores the scope and impact of the legal principle of solidarity and fair sharing of responsibility in EU asylum law; she critically analyses the Union’s efforts to implement solidarity; and reflects on meaningful ways forward towards realising the fair sharing of responsibility. The next politico-institutional cycle needs to result in a redesign of the EU asylum policy, which embeds solidarity and fair sharing of responsibility structurally, rather than linking it with the notion of emergency, she demands.