Contribution of the Common European Asylum System Members - Coursework Example

To what extent has the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) contributed to a more effective cooperation between Member States? Introduction Asylum is the creation of a common field of security and solidarity. It is awarded to such people who run away from their country of origin out of fear to be persecuted or assaulted and as an outcome desire global security. Being a basic global right, asylum is awarded out of obligation as was first of all identified in the 1951 Geneva Convention to safeguard refugees. The European Union is a boundary free organisation where states have come together to support the basic values and are striving collectively to find a unanimous solution of the refugee issues by adhering to lofty standards for safeguarding refugee interests. It requires the various processes at the same time to be just and efficient across the EU for not to be maltreated. Keeping this in view, the EU States have fixed the deadline for creating a Common European Asylum System (CEAS) by 2012 (EU: Asylum –Building a common area of protection and solidarity, 2011). CEAS Definition of Refugee Status Defining the refugee status is an essential part of the CEAS over the EU horizon. Subsidiary status is also equally essential to know, which is provided when an applicant fails to get the refugee status before offered asylum. It is the objective of the EU Directive to align these statuses by stipulating minimum criteria to qualify for these statuses of non-EU nationals and stateless individuals as refugees or people in need of global security as refugees (EU: Who can benefit from international protection in the EU? 2011). The right to asylum is recognised in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of human rights 1948, as per the UN Refugee Agency. The EU adheres to the United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees, ratified in 1951, which is pivotal to global refugee protection in current time. The Convention became effective on 22 April 1954, and it has undergone only one amendment in the making of a 1967 Protocol, which discarded the physical boundaries and transitional drawbacks of the 1951 Convention (UNHCR, 2010). Formation of the CAES – the First Phase The first phase for establishing the CEAS ranges between 1999 and 2005 when a number of legislative steps were focussed at in accordance with common applicable criteria for granting asylum. Out of them, the four most significant steps included: Directive on welcome Conditions for asylum-seekers Directive on criteria for awarding a refugee status or a beneficiary of subsidiary protection status Directive on Asylum Procedures The 'Dublin' Regulation decides the name of an EU State for checking an asylum application. Another critical issue was fortification of financial unity with the creation of the European Refugee Fund. In 2001, the Temporary Protection Directive paved the way for a common EU response to a mass incoming of dislocated individuals unable to go back to their own country. Another directive, the Family Reunification Directive, is also related to refugees (EU: Asylum –Building a common area of protection and solidarity, 2011). Three Pillars After reaching the conceptual phase, a time of introspection came for the CEAS to analyse the road taken so that right turn and direction could be given to the cause of CEAS. The 2007 Green Paper was the instrument of huge public debate on the outcomes of inspecting the usage of the current tools to form the basis for the EU’s Policy Plan on Asylum, which was presented in 2008. The Policy Plan over CEAS stressed on three leading objectives in connection with the creation of CEAS: 1. Increased matching to standards of security by bringing in sync the asylum legislation of Member States. It needed changes to the three most critical EU asylum directives: tackling with welcome conditions for asylum applicants, asylum processes and standards for refugee criteria for people requiring global security. 2. Efficient and well-backed practical cooperation. The objective under the European Asylum Support Office was to incessantly work for including all functions attached to practical cooperation on asylum under its canopy, particularly by following a common method to Country of Origin Information and to the common European Asylum Curriculum. The objective also included leading the Asylum Support Teams on deputation to Member States in need of support. 3. Increased alignment and sense of duty among EU States and between the EU and non-EU states. The "Dublin" system needed to be strengthened via the formation of solidarity mechanisms to materialise in focussed impact of the support for those EU states whose asylum systems were under pressure. The objective of CEAS under this pillar was to strengthen partnership between the EU and non-EU countries, for example via Regional Protection Programmes and Resettlement. This methodology objective has been reiterated and proved at the top political level – the European Council – with the Pact on Immigration and Asylum of 2008 and the Stockholm Programme of 2009. A Commission Action Plan in 2008 enlisted on its agenda the particular steps the Commission would initiate till 2014 to facilitate fulfilment of promises made under the Stockholm Programme (EU: Asylum –Building a common area of protection and solidarity, 2011). The EU law governing the asylum seekers’ right to global security backs those asylum seekers who do not have sources to strengthen their claim for the status of asylum by fulfilling their basic needs of housing and clothing while they are waiting a verdict on their claim. The related Directive on welcome conditions for asylum-seekers (2003/9/EC) guarantees suitable and matching welcome conditions across the EU to control the tendency among applicants to shift from one EU State to another in the desire of getting more warm welcome (EU: A dignified standard of living for asylum seekers in the EU, 2011). Concerning the rights of the asylum applicants, as per the EU Directive, they need to know their rights, and responsibilities to adhere to after arriving such as housing, food and clothing besides the freedom to move in the allotted region, union with the family, conditions to employment, vocational training, facility of medical and psychological care and right to learning for the kids in the family of asylum seekers (EU: Rights of the asylum applicants, 2011). The Directive offers the privileges to people with particular needs like minors, disabled individuals, the senior citizens and those who have not been given fair treatment. Such cases of applicants can seek legal opinion; meet the NGOs and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) (EU: Rights of the asylum applicants, 2011). It is the objective of the EU under the Directive to stipulate minimum standards or better provisions, not covered by the Geneva Convention. In sync with the EU effort to update the legislation, an evaluation report was made in 2007. Taking hints from the wider application of the Directive, it was revealed that in many regions, the purpose of providing equal welcome conditions was not fully met. To attend to the drawbacks and other lacunas revealed in the discussion after the release of the Green Paper on the future of the Common European Asylum System, a proposal was made by the Commission in December 2008 to amend Directive 2003/9/EC (EU: Rights of the asylum applicants, 2011). The objective of the proposal was to: Enlarge the limit of the Directive’s application to include those seeking subsidiary security Control the time limits for getting access to the labour market Ensure sufficient degree of material welcome conditions See to it that detention is rarely used and only in relation to some process-linked assurances See to it that systems are in place to earlier acknowledgement of special needs and arrange for the needed support. The European Parliament and the Council is analysing the proposal, which was subsequently improvised in June 2011 for the Directive (EU: Rights of the asylum applicants, 2011). With regard to amending the current legislation, it was noted in the 2010 Evaluation Report that there was lack of clarity over many notions in the Directive. As a result, various EU states were giving different explanations of the Directive. It was also noticed that initial decisions taken on singular cases were overturned on appeal, as they were not based on sound criteria, being vague and cloudy in stead of being straight forward and to-the-point. These were related to Qualifications Directive pertaining to some legal concepts for granting protection, removing differences in the degree of rights awarded to refugees and beneficiaries of subsidiary protection and promoting effective reach to rights allowed in the past by the Directive by considering the distinct integration risks faced by those having the refugee protection, which is under review of the European Parliament and the Council (EU: Who can benefit from international protection in the EU? 2011). Another objective of the CEAS has been in allowing and taking back the refugee status in the EU, the processes for which have been developed as per the various constitutional and bureaucratic customs. The objective has been to develop a minimum equal playing field across the EU by initiating assurances for a just and effective process dedicated to EU states to minimise differences between national systems. It is the objective of the Asylum Procedure Directive to provide the asylum applicants the critically necessary security and at the same time providing the EU States a range of instruments to select from to be effective and maintain the distinctiveness of their national asylum procedures. The provisions of the Asylum Procedures Directive include procedural sureties related to information, personal meeting and availability of legal help. It stipulates minimum obligations to be fulfilled by the applicants regarding asylum and refugee issues, to be handled by the experts, applicants’ right to appeal over a negative outcome of an application and set parameters for various applications conferred the status of 'inadmissible applications', 'manifestly unfounded applications', 'subsequent applications', 'safe third country' and 'safe country of origin’ (EU: Granting and withdrawing refugee status in the EU, 2011). The above conditions and stipulations are applicable to routine cases of asylum and refugee status. There are special provisions for distinct applications formulated by the EU States, for instance at a border, an EU State can cancel an application for asylum if some other state has allowed refugee status to an asylum seeker (EU: Granting and withdrawing refugee status in the EU, 2011). The first phase of harmonisation of the CEAS has not been successful, as is evident from the 2010 Evaluation Report, stating the presence of differences between legislation and practices irrespective of the steps taken in the first phase of CEAS harmonisation. It is due to ambiguity over certain minimum standards leading to different enforcement of set standards (EU: Granting and withdrawing refugee status in the EU, 2011). It is found that some standards are lacking in ensuring logical progression with the emerging case law of the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. To see to these lacunas in the current directives and others detailed in the Green Paper over the future of the CEAS, it has been proposed by the Commission to make amendments in the current directives (EU: Granting and withdrawing refugee status in the EU, 2011). Improvements to be proposed stress for a single process for deciding the refugee and subsidiary ranking, better and effective application verification process to smoothen the hold of the inspection process, better quality of asylum problem decisions and ensure the right of the asylum applicant to appeal the decision. The present status of the proposal is that it is still debated in the European Parliament and in the Council although an improvised proposal related to the Asylum directive was made by the Commission in June 2011 (EU: Granting and withdrawing refugee status in the EU, 2011). The CEAS is still far away from the singular motive of becoming the only protective region for the refugees. The Hague Programme stipulated the practice of CEAS by 2010 with the stress on EU to initiate the usage of it on the ‘second stage’ legislative tools. As per the Programme, it is expected to start working on new tools after evaluating completely the performance of ‘first stage’ tools, stating minimum absorption of national legal mechanisms. But the delay in the finalisation of the ‘first stage’ tools till 2005 when the supposed ‘Procedures Directive’ was taken over, the information provided on the enforcement of these tools and its issues were still not enough for a robust examination in 2007. Worried over the 2010 deadline, the Commission, however, made an attempt on the future of CEAS by issuing the Green Paper on 6 June, initiating the ‘second stage’ procedure. All the issues raised in the Green Paper, as stated above, were forwarded to the Member States to remove the ambiguities over them. The response of the Member States was not unanimous, as they expressed their reservations over some of the issues and had diverse opinion on many of the issues stated in the Green Paper. It became a hindrance in the smooth flow over a broad platform that the 2010 deadline needed (Monar, 2008). It was clear to observe that the EU was way behind an equal support and secure system when in November 2007 the Commission released the final report on the usage of the 2003 directive on minimum standards for the welcome of asylum applicants. There were key variations between support benchmarks as the six Member States offered not enough financial support to provide sustenance, the right to free movement, as some Member States followed questionable detention practices and reach to employment (Monar, 2008). Measuring the performance of ‘Dublin System’ offered some satisfaction over the extent of effective cooperation among the Member States over the rules deciding the duties of Member States for verifying an asylum application, causing shifting of asylum applicants between Member States. As per the Commission Report 2007c, an objective proof was found against the popular belief that most of the shifting of refugees was focussed towards the Member States situated at international borders; it had heated the political environment over the division of asylum applicants between border and non-border Member States, which was in reality quite balanced. In 2005 a total of 3,055 refugees were shifted to international border Member States and 5,161 were shifted to non-border Member States. Still, the report revealed that many asylum applications were recurrently posing critical issues, as the number of such applications was 16% of the total applications and just near to 30% of requested shifts were performed. It stresses on the need for an extended improvisation of the Dublin system as necessary for the future CEAS (Monar, 2008). Monar (2010) analysis of the EU refugee policy covers the first bundle of Commission legislative proposals for finalising the Common European Asylum System (CEAS), the Commission had presented in the previous year. There was very modest development on outlining the 2003 Reception Conditions Directive, the 2003 Dublin and the 2000 Eurodac Regulations. A large number of Member States were of the opinion that unless complete discussion on the proposals was not made over the usage of the current content, but time crunch was the biggest issue as the previous deadline for the CEAS was made by accepting the challenge that it would be completed under the given deadline. The most debatable issues among the Member States were related to finding a better and efficient way of burden-sharing under the Dublin system, probabilities and terms of detention and the rights of children. As the discussions were going on over the urgent agenda, the Commission increased the work of the Member States by adding three more proposals to the list. Finally, on 18 February the Commission presented the proposal for the setting up of a European Asylum Support Office (EASO) as an EU-financed organisation for backing and reinforcing useful co-operation between the Member States for the CEAS. The new responsibilities were included in the proposal as supporting actions covering exchanges of good practices, sharing data on countries of origin, support for partnering between Member States under the Dublin Regulation, support for resettlement, translation and interpreting, training, technical support and support over outside issues. Besides, the Commission desired that the EASO should help Member States under specific pressure via an early alerting system, assisting the States with the starting appraisal of asylum requests and the quick-fixing of suitable welcome facilities by Member States depending on the pressure as well as the co-operation of asylum support teams. Lastly, the Commission also added to the list of responsibilities the reporting roles like a yearly report on the asylum condition in the EU and an appraisal of enforcement and developing instructions and functional manuals. The EASO proposal was to a limited extent based on other available AFSJ organisations like Europol in connection with its reporting activities and like Frontex in relation to its functional co-operation and support activities. It is now becoming clear that a good number of Member States back the setting up of the EASO, to function as a tool in the critical burden-sharing and analysis function. Now, it is very much evident that there is ambiguity over the extent of the CEAS functions as opinion is divided over it among the Member States regarding their financial meanings and about the probabilities of the EASO to analyse national functional practices and releasing guidelines on them (Monar, 2010). In its desire to at the minimum include all major proposals for the CEAS on the table before the completion of the Hague Programme, the Commission again presented on 21 October another proposal bundle made up by the rephrasing of the 2004 Qualification and 2005 Asylum Procedures Directives (Monar, 2010). In the context of the 2004 Qualification, the Commission agreed with the analysis of NGOs and the UNHCR that the current minimum parameters for the qualification and rank of refugees as beneficiaries of global protection had failed in getting enough degree of harmonisation and had affected negatively on the standards in decision-making by national administrations. It also pin-pointed the urgency for additional unity in securing standards so that the secondary shifting of refugees between Member States decreases as a result of various national legal mechanisms and decision-making functions and various degrees of rights offered (which is the cause behind the extent of the varied ‘attractiveness’ of Member States to asylum seekers). The Commission's proposal hence targets the removal of ambiguities over major legal notions like ‘actors of protection’ or ‘internal protection’ used to define the basis for protection, hence helping decision-makers across the EU to use the criteria regularly and to find out exactly who is actually in need of protection. The Commission perceives it as an assurance of relatively faster reach to their rights by the refugees, a major UNHCR issue and pave the way for removing quickly the unqualified individuals, another major issue for Member States. The Commission proposal also stipulates the end of the differences between the rights of refugees and beneficiaries of subsidiary security, for example concerning the time of living permits or access to social welfare, health care and to the labour market and the provision of the identification of qualifications, reach to vocational training and employment beside the integration facilities (Monar, 2010). The Commission's proposal for the remodelling of the Procedures Directive was purposed to align the inspection procedure of asylum seekers by prescribing a routine time limit of six months for finishing processes at first hearing and by smoothening out process-related concepts and tools like the notion of ‘safe country of origin’ or the speeded up processes. The objective behind was also to reach quality decisions on granting asylums by ‘frontloading’ services, suggestions and guidance and boosting Member States to service ‘robust’ decisions at first serving with a better defence of negative outcomes. The objective of the Commission also included providing increased reach of refugees to efficient processes by taking in territorial waters in the ambit of the Directive – as an outcome to the increased number of refugee disturbances at sea in the Mediterranean – and by defining the duties of border guards, police and staff at detention facilities. The NGOs mostly greeted the Commission for the high degree of process-related precautions in the proposal, the preserving of the debated ‘European safe third-country’ idea permitting the Member States as per the Article 38 of the revised Directive to reject asylum applications from, for example, Belarus, Moldova and the Russian Federation, a complete or even partial inspection of an asylum application was not ignored by the NGOs (Monar, 2010). The robust connections between the various CEAS proposals – the critical role of the EASO in efficiently enforcing the rephrased Procedures Directive was one of the most indicative outcome along with the financial implications of the CEAS to transform this one of the largest legislative and political ‘packages’ on the AFSJ list so far. A unanimous opinion on it needed a huge campaign in its favour to be run at many fronts including the Member States in the Council and between Council and Parliament and by the finish of the year, indications were clear that this could not be attained by the initial Hague Programme deadline of 2010. While discussions were being held on the lacunas in first instance identification decision rates, from 0.2% in Greece to 65.3% in Poland in the last year, and the unexpected huge number of Iraqi asylum applications in Germany and the Serbian applications in France revealed the huge asymmetries in the present EU system (Monar, 2010). Thielemann & El-Enany (2011) are of the opinion that it would be wrong to believe that European cooperation on asylum has affected negatively the cause of asylum seekers, disagreeing the notion of ‘Fortress Europe’, limiting the asylum seekers’ reach to the European territories and actually availing benefits from the protection. If we consider the statistical aspects of EU policies on rights of asylum applicants, the safe third country’s policy, detention and return policy are targeted for limiting the rights of asylum seekers. In a number of destination countries, the asylum laws have not served the purpose of providing protection but there is no proof of the flaring caused by adhering to a general European asylum policy for limiting the level of protection. Actually, Europe-wide cooperation has helped in reducing regulatory restrictions and this process has arrested the drive to the bottom in securing standards in the EU. Many Member States have updated their internal asylum laws by reinforcing protection parameters for communities of forced migrants even in the matter of EU laws, which have been largely attacked for their limited nature. Although Member States hugely differ in the application of EU asylum law but the grouping of asylum policy will improve the enforcement of the EU asylum law and reinforce the refugee security positively in Europe (Thielemann & El-Enany, 2011). Suggestions for Policy Makers While drafting policy, not only the progress on the EU front should be analysed by policy makers but they should also pay attention to the happenings in the jurisdiction of the ECTHR along with the findings and suggestions of the UNHCR. An asylum applicant needs to be provided free legal help at first, as not having enough resources to follow the court processes. Domestic law needs to ensure that asylum applicants are not detained in the law, enforcing it seriously and if such a step is taken, it should be plainly explained to the detainees why the arrest and detention has been made to avoid any ambiguity in the minds of asylum applicants. Those availing subsidiary protection should be welcomed in integration programmes. Preferably, there should be a single rank for refugee and subsidiary security, offering equal rights and gains for both classes of asylum seekers (Dr Kyrieri & Pahladsingh, 2010). Strengthening the Harmonisation Process via Resettlement The EU states should use resettlement strategically to reinforce the harmonisation process as the esteem level is higher of the resettled refugee than that of an asylum seeker; it has a ‘knock-on’ effect for the people to comprehend various conditions compelling resettled refugees and asylum applications to run away from (Selm, 2003). The Feasibility Study on Resettlement indicates that involving in resettlement may not impress on the count of continuous asylum applicants in the EU unless particular attention is focused on selection criteria and numerical targets but even then it does not stand a guarantee of the impression of the resettlement (Selm, 2003). Nevertheless, the objective of using resettlement to control the incoming in the EU of individuals in need of global security can surely be attained and success in that field would not be impressed by changes in the count of asylum applicants. It will bring out the Europe’s humanitarian perspective by providing a better image of refugees and facilitating the people over Europe to see that their governments are taking care of refugee protection efficiently, to a certain degree via resettlement. (Selm, 2003). Recommendations 1. All EU Member States, either in individual capacity or sharing basis, should conduct resettlement programmes. Initially, the level of such programmes can be small to cover only urgent resettlement for secure cases, at the behest of UNHCR. After a period focus needs to be made to selection criteria that promote wide resettlement by providing a long term solution to refugees with the objective of burden sharing with states in the area of origin. 2. The EU Member States should observe resettlement as necessary for an all-inclusive approach to protection by including other long-term solutions connected to the EU’s outside relations. An all-inclusive approach would focus on capacity building steps in countries of first asylum besides return and repatriation, both from countries in the region of origin and from the EU Member States. 3. The EU should assimilate its growing Common European Asylum System and a Resettlement Programme to be integrated in a Common European International Protection System, permitting the Union to follow an umbrella approach over refugee protection. 4. To boost resettlement as a temporary step in Member States not running any such programme, collaboration between those countries and the Member States needs to be practiced between the Member States and the traditional resettlement countries. 5. The Commission should take the initiative by adhering to the Feasibility Study on Resettlement finished off late to send a Communication to the Council and the Parliament for analysis taking place either in the High Level Working Group or in SCIFA to further the matter on resettlement. The objective of the discussion should be to find out possibilities of agreement on accomplishing resettlement in all Member States and the role for the Union and Commission in such a programme or programmes (Selm, 2003). The EU Member States should strive to create wider resettlement programmes which can be tactically used to the benefit of refugee security, the refugees, the states of first asylum and the Member States themselves. One outcome of this would be the reinforcing the esteem of EU States as providers of refugee protection internationally. This would be a critical move in the EU harmonisation process on asylum and migration problems. International players in refugee protection need to exhibit solidarity with countries getting huge number of refugees and express the desire to share (and not transfer) the responsibility of protection. The truth that about half the EU Member States involve in resettlement means that there will be a crack in the Common System if they go on practicing their normally good and traditionally followed practices while other States do not be a part of the resettlement system (Selm, 2003). . Political problems can surface especially in the recurrent talks on counts and selection criteria. Criteria need to be worked out for protection to find out the refugees to be resettled to any particular state. It may include the number of refugees the EU Member States can resettle by stipulating a target not to be crossed. Such issues keeping in focus the European integration and the humanitarian identity of Europe need to be discussed and administered as the European Union appears as a robust player in refugee resettlement (Selm, 2003). Conclusion The ever-increasing number of asylum applicants in Europe has brought to the fore-front the ramifications of the asylum policy. The earlier a decade long control in the asylum policies has caused a twist in the EU to innovate a new policy to attend to the needs of asylum applicants that do not go against the interests of the citizens. The outcomes that previous policies have not rendered the objectives depend on the concept that refugees are assumed to be public products with bubbling over impact created among the EU states. Only in-between the bubbling over the deviating impacts of the policy can be observed as not serving the cause of welfare. During the 1990s when states formulated individual policies, the possibility of burden-sharing could have been greater to see results but there were not enough incentives as there was no coordinating infrastructure (Hatton, 2005). The agenda pursued at Tampere offered the possibility of adhering to the harmonisation process more earnestly. Although the harmonisation policies are not enough, the very procedure of its initiation increased cooperation. The objective of EU-wide policy for maximum leverage or at the minimum for treading the middle path could not be attained and the procedure was found to be just one of levelling down. The stage 1 of CEAS could not achieve the targeted overall improvement in the welfare through financial responsibility sharing to create a large refugee fund. The new opportunity in the 2nd stage of CEAS can help in this objective by pursuing an integrated methodology. Taking an insight of past experience, the possibility is rare that the new mechanism will help in the building of an autonomous body for migration and asylum on the lines of the European Central Bank. The policy, it seems, would be quite strict. In such a scenario, it would be advisable to follow both kinds of burden-sharing: re-diffusing refugees to fix the allocation right, and performing financial burden-sharing to increase the total intake to the maximum degree (Hatton, 2005). CEAS is not free from human rights conflicts, as observed through discourse analysis by Hattrell (2010) by accomplishing the growth chart of CEAS since its existence in 1999. The possibility exists for the materialisation of the rights-based asylum mechanism in the post-Lisbon context, research for which accrues through policy discussion and is based on a human rights mechanism of inquiry. This humanistic consideration can help in checking the normative and legal irregularities present in the EU’s protective methodology to asylum and to offer suggestions for a methodology to asylum in the EU, which instils a rights-based perspective over protection. The discussion on current EU asylum policy and practice indicates the degree to which securitisation is visible in EU asylum policymaking. It demonstrates that unless the security shift in this policy region is made, the materialisation of a rights-based asylum system in the EU can not be feasible. Road ahead for the EU is full of challenges to the materialisation of the EU as a ‘single asylum space,’ which emerges from the deficiencies in the current tools, most noticeable being the non-provision of burden-sharing mechanisms to guarantee that the EU’s humanitarian responsibilities are divided equally amongst Member States. The latest ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon assumes critical possibility for the creation of rights-based asylum governance in the EU. Nevertheless, it is doubtful whether the Member States have the political determination necessary to fulfil this. References: European Union, 2011. Asylum – building a common area of protection and solidarity. Available from: http://ec.europa.eu/home affairs/policies/asylum/asylum_intro_en.htm European Union, 2011. A dignified standard of living for asylum seekers in the EU. Available from: http://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/policies/asylum/asylum_seekers_en.htm European Union, 2011. Granting and withdrawing refugee status in the EU. Available from: http://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/policies/asylum/asylum_common_en.htm 2011 European Union, 2011. Who can benefit from international protection in the EU? Available from: http://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/policies/asylum/asylum_subsidiary_en.htm Hatton, T. J., 2005. European asylum policy. National Institute Economic Review, vol. 194, no.1, 106-119. doi: 10.1177/0027950105061503 Hattrell, F., 2010. The securitised asylum policies of the ‘Common European Asylum System’. Thesis, (M.A.) University of Canterbury. Available from: http://www.ir.canterbury.ac.nz/bitstream/10092/5311/1/FelicityHattrellRedefiningtheLimitsofRefugeeProtectionMAthesis.pdf Dr Kyrieri, K.M. & and Pahladsingh, A., 2010. The European asylum system and minimum standards: ‘suggestions for practice and policy’. European Institute of Public Administration Working Paper 2010/W/02. Available from: http://aei.pitt.edu/14453/1/20100625093148_Workingpaper2010_W_02.pdf Monar, J., 2008. The JCMS Annual Review of the European Union in 2007. Journal of Common Market Studies, vol. 46, no. s1, pp. 109-126. Available from: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.remote.baruch.cuny.edu/doi/10.1111/j.1468-5965.2010.02098.x/full Monar, J., 2010. Justice and home affairs. JCMS, vol. 48, no. s1, pp. 143-162 doi 10.1111/j.1468-5965.2010.02098.x Selm, J. V., 2003. ‘Towards more orderly and managed entry in the EU of persons in need of international protection’, International Seminar, 13-14 October 2003 Rome. Available from: http://www.migrationpolicy.org/pubs/The%20Strategic%20Use%20of%20Resettlement-Rome2003.pdf Thielemann, E., & El-Enany, N., 2011. Common laws, diverse outcomes: can EU asylum initiatives lead to more effective refugee protection? Paper prepared for the European Union Studies Association‘s 12th Biennial International Conference, Boston. Available from: http://euce.org/eusa/2011/papers/1a_thielemann.pdf UNHCR, 2010. The UN Refugee Agency: convention and protocol relating to the status of refugees. Introductory note by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Available from: http://www.unhcr.org/protect/PROTECTION/3b66c2aa10.pdf Read More