“Today’s ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) clearly shows the EU’s need to urgently establish a Common European Asylum System and to support Member States in meeting their obligations to provide adequate international protection.”
Statement of Cecilia Malmström, European Commissioner for Home Affairs, 21 January 2011.
Ironically it may be argued that the Dublin II Regulation has been successful if we assume that its main aim has been to shift some (or indeed most) of the asylum seeking examination burden to the peripheral countries of the EU. If however the aim of the Dublin Convention and the Dublin II regulation has been the streamlining of the asylum system in Europe, then it has actually been a big failure. Indeed the side-effects have been important and had to do with the fact that the southern European countries that are the first safe countries that asylum seekers from Asia and Africa – more often than not travelling on foot, by car, truck, with the help of human smugglers – encounter on their way, faced disproportionate pressures with which they were unable to deal….
For a concise analysis of the consequences of Dublin II and the impossibility to effectively manage asylum at the European level as well as a discussion of the Greek case see: Triandafyllidou, A. and Dimitriadi, A. The management of Asylum in Europe. Εφαρμογές Δημοσιου Δικαίου Ι/2011 [Public Law Implementation I/2011) year 24, pp. 22-26.
