scholarly journals Mass Influxes and Protection in Europe: A Reflection on a Temporary Episode of an Enduring Problem

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-181
Author(s):  
John Koo

Abstract This article assesses Temporary Protection (TP) in Europe in response to refugee crises. In 2001 the European Union (EU) adopted a Directive for TP to provide a regional response to a mass influx. It was considered that TP offered a double-win: addressing protection needs of asylum seekers, while enabling states to maintain control based on the understanding that asylum seekers would return home after a short period of stay. The Directive has been endorsed in UNHCR Guidelines on ‘Temporary Protection or Stay Arrangements’ (2014). Notwithstanding, the analysis in this article indicates that TP was a strategy that failed: it did not give states control nor promote solidarity between them. Failure explains its absence in the responses to the 2015–16 crisis. However, national forms of TP have re-emerged signalling efforts to re-assert control in the face of an enduring problem.

2020 ◽  
pp. 33-52
Author(s):  
Lara Krayem

Following the mass influx of people in Europe after 2011 and the Arab Spring uprisings, Europe has been admitting refugees into its borders predominantly under the Dublin III Regulation. However, Dublin III was never intended to be an emergency tool for asylum seekers, but became one as most entries take place through irregular routes. Europe received around 1.3 million asylum seekers in 2015 which is the highest number of asylum applications in its history. Questions are raised as to why Europe refrained from using the Temporary Protection Directive which serves exactly the purpose of establishing minimum standards for giving temporary protection and promoting a balance of efforts between Members States when receiving displaced persons. This Directive arguably provides a solution for the burden sharing issues that Europe has been facing which cause the rise of nationalism in many border States such as Italy and Greece as they are the main hosts of asylum seekers. Europe has also been entering into questionable agreements such as the EU-Turkey deal that does not necessarily comply with International Humanitarian Laws or jus cogens principles such as non-refoulement. Europe’s avoidance of the use of the Temporary Protection Directive raises a lot of questions. It brings to the surface the politics that surround the asylum process of the European Union and sheds light on the growing need of the EU to close its borders and avoid offering protection to people in need. This notion of border strengthening controls seems to be growing. As a result, the Union continues to use questionable agreements and the implementation of the Dublin III Regulation as an emergency measure instead of using the Temporary Protection Directive to promote fair sharing and solidarity. This article will examine the reasons behind the non-implementation of the Temporary Protection Directive to demonstrate that Europe does not wish to assist asylum seekers but keep them out of its territory. Moreover, this article supports that the mass influx of asylum seekers during the Arab-Spring uprisings was a missed opportunity to activate the Directive that has now become obsolete as it is unlikely to ever be activated.


2005 ◽  
Vol 35 (140) ◽  
pp. 379-392
Author(s):  
Helmut Dietrich

Poland accepted the alien and asylum policy of the European Union. But what does it mean, in the face of the fact that most of the refugees don´t want to sojourn a lot of time in Poland, but want to join their families or friends in Western Europe? How the transfer of policies does work, if the local conditions are quite different than in Germany or France? The answer seems to be the dramatization of the refugee situation in Poland, especially the adoption of emergency measures towards refugees of Chechnya.


Author(s):  
Pál Sonnevend

AbstractModern constitutionalism is based on the paradigm that courts are inherently entitled and obliged to enforce the constitution of the respective polity. This responsibility of courts also applies in the context of the European Union to both the CJEU and national constitutional courts. The present chapter argues that in the face of constitutional crises the CJEU and the Hungarian Constitutional Court shy away from applying the law as it is to the full. The reasons behind this unwarranted judicial self-restraint are most different: the CJEU aims to avoid conflicts with national constitutional courts whereas the Hungarian Constitutional Court has been facing a legislative power also acting as constitution making power willing to amend the constitution to achieve specific legislative purposes or to undo previous constitutional court decisions. Yet both courts respond to expediencies that do not follow from the law they are called upon to apply. It is argued that rule of law backsliding requires these courts to abandon the unnecessary self-restraint and exploit the means already available.


Author(s):  
Marie Söderberg

Japan and the European Union have recently made several agreements aiming to deepen their cooperation. An example of this is the “Partnership on Sustainable Connectivity and Quality Infrastructure between the European Union and Japan,” by which both EU and Japan agreed to “promote free, open, rules-based, fair, non-discriminatory and predictable regional and international trade and investment, transparent procurement practices, the ensuring of debt sustainability and the high standards of economic, fiscal, financial, social and environmental sustainability.” This is just the latest part in an effort by both to revive multilateral cooperation in the face of US withdrawal from international agreements and the rise of a more assertive China. Japan and EUs Strategic Partnership Agreement provides a legally binding framework for further cooperation in the field of politics, security, and development. Underpinning it are shared values and principles of democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and fundamental freedoms. For the protection of democracy and the liberal world order, Japan and the EU seem like ideal partners. The question is whether ongoing shifts in the power balance, geopolitics, crises of liberalism, domestic politics, and legal and technological changes will lead to broader and deeper cooperation. This chapter provides a historical background to Japan-European relations from WWII until today. The relation started with a heavy emphasis on trade and business. It is only recently that the two have broadened their cooperation and now stand up as two of the strongest defenders of a liberal rule-based world order.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 343-356
Author(s):  
Andréa Arruda VAZ ◽  
Marco Antônio Lima Berberi ◽  
Tais Martins

The research presents in a practical way the impacts of the crisis of 2008 and following years in Europe and the action of the economic block, to mitigate the crisis through austerity measures, which last to date. The search for a solution to the crisis that has plagued the European Union, the possible conflict with unavailable rights and the imposed need for flexibilization of rights, especially in labour law, deserves debate. The measures put forward by the member countries of the European Union to solve the economic crisis are also partly linked to the idea of the suppression of rights. For example, we mention the reduction of working hours, an increase in the retirement age, among other fundamental precepts inherent to the dignity of the human person, which have been made more flexible during the crisis. This article discuss the legality of these flexibilities in the face of the protection of fundamental human rights and European Community law, from the point of view of international law, of the Convention OIT, ONU, which have been ratified by the various countries of Europe. Over the years, the European Union has been going through a series of crises and consequent precarious labour law, one of the most recent and relevant, the UNITED KINGDOM’s withdrawal from the European Union through so-called Brexit.


Author(s):  
Necati Polat

This chapter provides an outline of the change that took place in Turkey between 2007 and 2011, signalling a historic shift in the use of power in the country, long controlled by a staunch and virtually autonomous bureaucracy, both military and civilian, and known as ‘the state’, in the face of the chronically fragile democratic politics, forming ‘the government’. The time-honoured identity politics of the very bureaucracy, centred on ‘Westernisation’ as a policy incentive, was deftly appropriated by the ruling AKP via newly tightened links with the European Union to transform the settled centre-periphery relations often considered to be pivotal to Turkish politics, and reconfigure access to power. The chapter details the gradual fall of the bureaucracy—that is, the military, the higher education, and the system of high courts—and recounts the basic developments in foreign policy and on the domestic scene during and immediately after the change.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 197-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Blondin ◽  
Arjen Boin

Abstract The nation state is discovering the limits of its crisis management capacities. The Ebola and Zika outbreaks, the financial crisis, the downing of flight MH17 over Ukraine, sinking ships overfilled with refugees, cyber-attacks, urban terrorism and existential environmental threats serve as strong reminders of the complex origins and transboundary dimensions of many contemporary crises and disasters. As these transboundary aspects of modern crises become increasingly manifest, the need for international, collaborative responses appears ever clearer. But that collaboration does not always emerge in time (or at all). Even in the European Union, which has various transboundary crisis management mechanisms in place, the willingness to initiate joint crisis responses varies. This observation prompted our research question: Why do states collaborate in response to some transboundary crises but not others? We bring together the crisis and collective action literatures to formulate a theoretical framework that can help answer this question. This article identifies crucial factors that facilitate a possible pathway toward a joint response.


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