Interstate solidarity and responsibility shirking in refugee protection : a normative approach to justice among EU member states

Abstract

The European response to the 2015-16 inflow of asylum seekers raises some important questions: how are we to understand the references and appeals to solidarity among EU member states? Do EU member states have a particular moral duty to share the costs connected to providing asylum that is different from what we understand to be the general duties of cooperation among states globally? What if the policy choices of some member states in relation to asylum negatively affect other members? In this thesis I address these questions by defining normatively acceptable and practically feasible regulatory principles for the EU asylum system. By adopting a normative institutionalist and EU-focused approach to the ethics of refugee protection, I argue that EU member states are called to equitably share the responsibility for refugee protection pursuant to the duty to act in solidarity. The analysis is prompted both by the failure of EU member states to respond adequately to the ongoing refugee emergency, and by the lack of normative guidelines to establish the duties among members of a regional association that features the partial pooling of the traditional powers of sovereignty. While the thesis is primarily a work in normative political theory, it thus aims to inform current policy debates by suggesting what EU member states owe each other when it comes to protecting asylum seekers and refugees. The first part of the thesis develops a normative argument about the obligations generated by EU membership with respect to interstate asylum practices. The second part examines how member states justify their non-compliance with the normative theory proposed above and how adequate these arguments are. In the concluding part, I elaborate on the remedial duties that EU member states have vis-à-vis widespread noncompliance with the duty to act in solidarity.