The Dublin System of Refugee Admission: A Law and Economics Analysis

Abstract

The Dublin system of refugee admission is a European legal framework designed to address the problem of refugees in Europe by allocating responsibility [of examining asylum applications] to Member States. It is intended to facilitate the asylum application process of third country nationals coming to Europe by, inter alia, ensuring effective and accessible asylum procedures, maintaining family unity, guaranteeing the full respect for the principle of non-refoulement and by preventing potential 'forum shopping' by asylum seekers. For this, it consists of hierarchy of objective criteria on which the responsibility of the Member States is determined. Following such criteria, once a Member State found that another Member State is responsible to evaluate the asylum application of a particular asylum seeker, it can request the latter State to take charge of the claim. Upon acceptance of such request, it can also transfer the asylum seeker to the responsible Member State. This paper questions the efficiency of this System by examining it both from theoretical and practical scenarios. Accordingly, by modeling the various universal refugee Conventions and those EU agreements establishing the Dublin System as 'contracts with the object of providing a public good of international protection to refugees' and using the 'Cost-Incentive-Risk Sharing' Analysis, it contends that the Dublin framework is inherently flawed and inefficient system for it not only entails high transaction costs but also gives no /low/ incentive for States to discharge their contractual obligations. Besides, despite the solidarity and shared responsibility that it seeks to promote, the System lacks proper burden sharing mechanism among the various Member States that consequently made some handful States to bear the larger burden than others.