The global refugee emergency and Europe's response

Abstract

The number of people seeking asylum in the EU has increased exponentially over the past few years. By 2015, there were a record 1.3 million asylum seekers in the EU. The emergency has led to controversial but also innovative political and policy decisions such as: the imposition of relocation quotas, the creation of special border regimes for the processing of asylum claims, the prioritizing of an EU foreign policy approach that aims to contain irregular migration and asylum seeking through various incentives and rewards to origin and transit countries. At the same time it has also been clear that the refugee flow was so large as to endanger the very political stability of the EU. This panel will take a critical and comprehensive approach towards these developments, seeking to assess what has been achieved and what the crucial challenges are for the present and future, both at the European and global level.