Fence-sitters no more: Southern and Central Eastern European Member States’ role in the deadlock of the CEAS reform

Abstract

This article explains recent changes in the negotiation dynamics concerning EU asylum policies, the policy failure in the Common European Asylum System and the deadlock in its post-2016 reform. Combining the Core State Power framework with the literature on punctuated equilibria and bounded rationality, it argues that EU asylum policies have important redistributive implications. In earlier phases, these were concealed by a regulatory policymaking approach which depoliticized EU legislation in that area. The 2015 asylum crisis demonstrated that this approach failed to produce the expected integration and entailed an even unfairer distribution of asylumseekers, hence leading to information updating among Member States. Together with the ascent of right-wing populism in many Member States, this has fundamentally changed the negotiation dynamics from a situation with a few dominant Member States to a highly politicized environment in which previously passive Member States acted either as promoters or as blockers, thus producing deadlock.

Perpetuating Crisis as a Supply Strategy: The Role of (Nativist) Populist Governments in EU Policymaking on Refugee Distribution

“…It has previously been shown that, in this area, positions are influenced by distributive implications (Biermann et al, 2019;Zaun 2018Zaun , 2022. Member states aim to reduce their share of asylum-seekers to cut down economic, social and political costs of hosting refugees.…”

“…Those strongly supporting or strongly opposing the idea were very active in the negotiations and had a vested interest in the adoption/non-adoption of Dublin IV and refugee relocation. Broadly speaking, the supporters are member states that would benefit in distributive terms from refugee redistribution, while those that opposed it were countries for whom quotas would have negative distributive consequences (see Biermann et al, 2019;Zaun, 2018Zaun, , 2022). Yet, the intensity of opposition and an unwillingness to compromise seems to be strongest among populist governments.…”

Finnish Civil Servants on Harmonization in the Asylum System: A Study in Horizontal Europeanization

“…In the EU, the ultimate test of the CEAS was the increase of asylum applicants in 2015, which clearly displayed fundamental weaknesses and, in some respects, a failure of the EU to advance a common policy (e.g., Lavenex, 2018;Zaun, 2020). It involved a partly uncontrolled arrival of migrants in the member states and a failure to find suitable ways of sharing the responsibility among the member states, involving fundamental disagreements concerning a relocation of asylum seekers.…”

“…Furthermore, national electorates mobilized by rightwing populist parties significantly influenced the positions taken by governments at the EU level (Wahlbeck, 2019b;Zaun, 2018). This politicization has changed the debate concerning the CEAS and made it increasingly difficult for national governments to agree on a revision of the CEAS (Zaun, 2020). Furthermore, the developments of 2015-and later the Covid-19 pandemicled to new border controls in the Schengen area.…”

“…Not surprisingly, much previous research and public debate on the CEAS has focused on the legal aspects and political challenges of the CEAS. This focus readily conveys a picture of a crisis in the CEAS (e.g., Lavenex, 2018;Scipioni, 2018;Zaun, 2020). Less research has been done on the national administrative practices and bureaucracies that implement the common asylum system (e.g., Lahusen & Wacker, 2019).…”