Refugees in the EU: the European framework and country modalities

William Molinié, edited by Alexandre Dalifard / Photo credit: EDOUARD RICHARD / HANS LUCAS / HANS LUCAS VIA AFP 06h11, June 09, 2023

On Thursday, a 31-year-old man attacked six people with knives, including four children, in a park in Annecy in Haute-Savoie. The individual, of Syrian nationality, legally returned to French territory and submitted his asylum application to the Ofpra on 28 November 2022. But concretely, what are the rules of asylum in Europe? While all European countries agree on what asylum is, as defined by the Geneva Convention or the Dublin agreements, the modalities of its application differ. Even if it is a corpus of texts that frames the criteria for asylum at European level, each Member State has its own system for issuing and monitoring asylum applications.

A system of issue specific to each Member State

The most stringent countries are Denmark, Finland and Sweden. Spain and Italy, meanwhile, have recently tightened controls on refugees. Finally, France and Germany are among the countries with the highest number of first-time asylum seekers. But Paris has delegated the monitoring of asylum to associations, while across the Rhine, the State has kept control. "This allows Berlin to better fulfill the obligations to leave the territory," says a connoisseur of the file.

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Another disparity is that some countries more easily grant refugee status on the basis of nationality. Before the fall of Kabul, for example, an Afghan was more likely to get protection in France than in Germany. Disparities that create migration of asylum seekers within the European Union itself. A harmonisation project was at the heart of discussions yesterday at a meeting of the 27 EU interior ministers in Luxembourg. Before Gérald Darmanin hastily left the room, direction Annecy.