The EU Directive on Reception Conditions: A weak compromise

Abstract:

As part of the project to create a ‘Common European Asylum System’, the EU adopted legislation between 2003 and 2005 on four key issues: the definition (ie, ‘qualification’) for refugee status; asylum procedures; reception conditions for asylum-seekers (dealing with issues like their welfare and employment); and responsibility for asylum-seekers (ie the ‘Dublin’ rules, which in principle require asylum-seekers to apply in one Member State only, which is determined by those rules).

These measures were considered to form the ‘first phase’ of the Common European Asylum System, and the EU’s Hague Programme, which set out an agenda for the development of EU Justice and Home Affairs Law from 2005-2010, set the objective of adopting legislation establishing the second phase of the Common European Asylum System by 2010. This deadline was later extended to 2012, but obviously even this later deadline will soon expire.