CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2015
| Author | Kiss, Csongor |
|---|---|
| Title | The European Union's Responsibility-sharing in Refugee Protection: An Empty Bottle? |
| Summary | The underlying principle of international cooperation in refugee protection is responsibility-sharing. States mainly share the responsibility through financial contributions or participation in the resettlement of refugees. Looking at the latest data published by UNHCR on resettlement, European Union Member States – conceivably some of the wealthiest countries in the world – significantly lag behind states such as the USA, Canada or Australia in terms of refugees resettled. While there is ample academic research available on internal-responsibility-sharing (among Member States) in the EU, the literature on external-responsibility-sharing (at the global level) is rather scarce. Employing qualitative analysis, the work examines the EU institutional discourse and then contrasts two examples of Member State practice in resettlement; Sweden and Belgium. This work argues that EU practice is not in accordance with the principle of responsibility-sharing, furthermore there is a bias towards intra-EU responsibility-sharing that hampers its development at the global level. The main problem identified is that the current voluntary framework for EU responsibility-sharing, especially in resettlement, leaves a high degree of discretion to Member States to decide whether to contribute. Therefore, the thesis advocates a binding quota-based framework to resettle refugees in accordance with fair, adequate and effective responsibility-sharing which would consequently increase EU activities at the global level. |
| Supervisor | Nagy, Boldizsár |
| Department | International Relations MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2015/kiss_csongor.pdf |
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