Framtidens ansvar för asylsökande – En kommentar till Europeiska Kommissionens förslag till ny Dublinförordning

Sammanfattning: The Dublin regulation establishes mechanisms for determining which state is responsible for the examination of an asylum application submitted within the EU. The regulation is a part of the Union's common asylum system and is considered essential for the functioning of this system. In the context of the refugee crisis of 2015, the European Commission has put forward proposals to reform and further harmonize EU asylum legislation. This reform includes a new Dublin regulation. The proposed changes specifically aim at countering secondary movements of asylum seekers, making “asylum shopping” impossible and to create a fairer distribution of responsibility between the EU Member States. This essay presents and describes the changes that the Commission has proposed and makes comments on these changes. The essay discloses that the proposal to some extent entails major changes such as that the applicants will have more obligations with linked penalties, that the responsibility for an applicant will become permanent and that a completely new pre-procedure and a new corrective allocation mechanism will be introduced. On the other hand, the principle remains that the responsibility is to be determined by application of the responsibility criteria, which is proposed to be the same criteria as today. The essay then comments on the proposed changes and finds that they in several aspects would create a regulatory framework that would be very difficult to apply and likely lead to different application in different Member States. In addition, several changes are inappropriate because they counteract either the primary objectives of the regulation or the new objectives for the reform. Furthermore, it is concluded that the proposal in many aspects may violate fundamental rights or counteract their realisation. Finally, the paper finds that if the proposed rules in the future will be applied in accordance with the Commission's intention, it would result in an uneven distribution of workload and responsibility for asylum seekers between Member States.