Share Advocacy Briefing Series

Our priorities & recommendations for EU action

This series gives regular updates on resettlement, sponsorship and complementary pathways including Share’s position, priorities and recommendations. The briefing series contains 8 chapters as follow:

  • Legal Pathways: Resettlement and Complementary Pathways of Admission for Refugees

  • Resettlement

  • Community Sponsorship

  • Integration

  • Integration in Smaller Communities and Rural Areas

  • Participation

  • Global Refugee Responses

  • EU Solidarity Measures

Legal Pathways: Resettlement and Complementary Pathways of Admission for Refugees 

What are legal pathways?

Legal Pathways, also known as ‘third country solutions’, include a range of complementary pathways relating to the admission of refugees. Complementary pathways offer additional opportunities for refugees to be admitted under national law, within a wider framework of ‘humanitarian admissions’.

Legal pathways as a global protection tool

Legal pathways enable refugees to move from a country in which they have sought protection to a receiving country. They are an essential tool for global refugee protection, and an expression of solidarity with the countries in the developing world hosting the majority of the world’s refugees.

Both resettlement and complementary pathways require careful planning, in countries of first asylum and in the local communities where refugees are received. Legal pathways are not a substitute for the legal right to seek asylum at European borders.

What is the global picture for legal pathways?

The Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) agreed by the UN General Assembly in December 2018 includes “expanding access to third country solutions” as one of its four key priorities, including through resettlement and complementary pathways. The Three-Year Strategy on Resettlement and Complementary Pathways provides a global framework for action during 2019-21 to achieve the GCR’s vision of 3 million refugees benefiting from resettlement (1 million) and complementary pathways (2 million) by 2028.

The SHARE Network has continuously supported the goals of the Three-Year Strategy, and will continue to do so under a new framework planned for 2022.

What about policy in Europe?

The European Union has promoted and engaged in resettlement for many years

In 2016, the European Commission proposed a new Regulation to offer a more sustainable legal basis and framework for joint European action on resettlement. Unfortunately, this Regulation has still not been adopted. More recently, the New Pact on Asylum and Migration, launched by the European Commission in September 2020, reconfirms European Union commitments and offers a non-binding framework for resettlement and complementary pathways. The accompanying Commission Recommendation on Legal Pathways to the EU: promoting resettlement, humanitarian admission nad other complementary pathways sets out EU actions to be taken in the years to come to realise this aim.

In EU policy, ‘Legal Pathways’ is an umbrella term encompassing UNHCR and state-led resettlement programmes, and other complementary pathways that are most often initiated by civil society actors, including private and community-based sponsorship, national humanitarian admission programmes (including humanitarian corridor and visa programmes), and labour and educational pathways accessible to refugees. EU policy envisages Legal Pathways in Member States as part of integrated programmes operated under national law or other frameworks, in collaboration with a diverse range of actors at national, regional and local level.

The EU supports the development of legal pathways in Member States by:

The Share view: What should the EU do?

At Share, we advocate to expand legal pathways so that persons in need of international protection can safely reach countries in Europe. We focus on expanding and improving EU resettlement efforts and growing complementary pathways to ensure more places for refugees become available under both strands. We advocate that the new and diverse protection and integration opportunities offered by complementary pathways are additional to all current and future resettlement commitments (the principle of ‘additionality’). Those shall not affect that adequate reception standards and safeguards are upheld for asylum seekers. 

Through comparing and sharing responses and pilot initiatives and lessons learned, we aim for all European countries to engage in programmes tailored to their specific contexts, that make use of available partnerships with civil society, churches, regional governments, local authorities, universities and private businesses.

That’s why we think the EU must:

  • Demonstrate global leadership on legal pathways to protection for refugees, ensuring EU policy and action supports global protection goals and actively engaging in international cooperation and partnership.

  • Ensure Member State commitments to establishing and expanding legal pathways to protection make a significant contribution to the global Three-Year Strategy vision of 3 million beneficiary refugees by 2028.

  • Support multiannual resettlement and complementary pathways programmes that respond to a range of regional protection priorities around the world, including both protracted and emergency situations.

  • Recognise, through policy and funding decisions, the principle of additionality and the unique protection and integration characteristics of specific legal pathways to protection.

  • Invest in grassroots and bottom-up approaches to creating community-based complementary protection pathways that are sustainable and support welcome and integration, linking varied sources of EU funding including the AMIF, European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the European Social Fund + (ESF+).

  • Continue to facilitate frameworks for peer support and knowledge-sharing for refugee resettlement and complementary pathways across Europe

Resettlement

What is resettlement?

Resettlement is one of the durable solutions UNHCR is mandated to implement in cooperation with states. It involves the selection and transfer of refugees from a state in which they have sought protection, to a third state that has agreed to admit them – as refugees – with a permanent residence status. Resettlement provides a means to protect refugees who cannot locally integrate in their host country or voluntarily repatriate to their country of origin. It also enables resettlement countries to demonstrate their solidarity with the countries hosting large numbers of refugees, the majority of which are in the developing world.

What is the global picture for resettlement?

In 2023, UNHCR estimates that more than 2 million people around the world will be in need of resettlement, representing a 36% increase compared to resettlement needs for 2022 (1.47 million). In 2019, approximately 64,000 resettled refugees (equivalent to around 4% of global needs) were received by resettlement countries around the world. This global shortfall in resettlement places became more acute with the advent of COVID-19 in 2020, when the number of refugees resettled to third countries fell to 22,800.

The 2018 Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) recognises resettlement as a protection tool for refugees, and a tangible global mechanism for responsibility-sharing and solidarity to reduce the impact of large refugee situations on host countries. It calls for contributions by states to establish and expand resettlement programmes, and to introduce or strengthen good practices into resettlement programming.

Its accompanying Three-Year Strategy on Resettlement and Complementary Pathways envisages 1 million refugees benefiting from resettlement by 2028, targeting 210,000 resettlement departures during 2019-21 alone. However, both decreasing US resettlement commitments from 2018 and the suspension of global resettlement during 2020 due to COVID-19 vastly reduced global resettlement numbers. While programmes are slowly restarting, achieving the GCR’s 2028 vision for resettlement requires immediate planning for strong subsequent programmes for 2022 and beyond

What is happening in Europe?

Since the early 2000s, the number of EU countries engaging in resettlement has grown. Many participated for the first time via joint resettlement efforts by EU Member States, which began in 2009 with a programme to receive 10,000 refugees from Iraq by 2009 in which 12 Member States participated.

Since 2013, EU funding for Member State national resettlement programmes has been linked to promoting joint EU resettlement priorities. Member States that pledge to receive specific numbers of refugees from EU priority situations are eligible to receive a lump sum payment for each refugee they receive, provided via the Asylum, Migration & Integration Fund (AMIF). Member State pledges are made every two years, as part of AMIF national programmes.

The ‘refugee crisis’ beginning in 2015 prompted renewed solidarity in EU resettlement. EU Member States subsequently came together to implement programmes to receive 20,000 (2015-17) and 50,000 (2018-19) resettled refugees. To give an overview of the state of resettlement and complementary pathways and highlight good practices, in April 2023 we published a Share publication in form of a booklet mapping sponsorship across Member States. This is a sequel to the graphic display series published in 2019.

In July 2016, the European Commission proposed a new Union Resettlement and Humanitarian Admission Framework (URF), designed to provide a framework a more permanent and structured EU policy on resettlement. The URF sets out common EU rules for the admission of third-country nationals, resettlement procedures, types of status, decision-making procedures and EU financial support for Member States’ resettlement efforts. The URF has been agreed in 2022 and Share has signed a statement with recommendations.

In July 2021, the European Commission convened a High Level Resettlement Forum to kick off planning for a new resettlement programme for 2022. In 2021, Member States pledged to resettle 20.000 refugees and admit 40.000 Afghans at Risk. At the end of 2022, 17.647 persons were resettled (including evacuations from Afghanistan) and 41.500 Afghan nationals admitted. In 2023, almost 30.000 pledges were received for 2023. The pledging exercise for the 2024-6 is ongoing.

That’s why we think the EU must:

  • The Union Resettlement and Humanitarian Admission Framework (URF) to be adopted in 2023, must establish a more structured, predictable and long-term commitment.

  • Within the URF Framework, EU member states should admit, as of 2024, 40,000 refugees annually under resettlement and humanitarian admission (RST & HA), in addition to 42,500 Afghans at risk over the coming 5 years.

  • EU MS must in all cases uphold the right to seek asylum in Europe.

  • The EU and MS should ensure regular reporting on fulfilling existing pledges on RST & HA and produce regular and reliable statistics.

  • With EU support, EU MS develop and incrementally increase complementary pathways programmes, incl. labour mobility and education pathways, with a target of 50.000 by 2028, additional to refugee RST commitments.

  • Community sponsorships (CS) can add to additional RST & HA numbers- requiring multi-annual programmes and dedicated governance structures that can set, implement and monitor numbers and outcomes.

  • AMIF lumpsum funding to MS for sponsorships under RST & HA, including via CS, should benefit civil society organisations and regional/local gvts - implementing these programmes.

  • Citizens hosting initiatives cannot replace MS obligations to provide reception. EU MS must expand reception capacity and explore alternative arrangements to support the reception and integration of all refugees.

  • Practices linked to welcoming Afghans and Ukrainians should be assessed to innovate ongoing RST and complementary pathways programmes, linked to CS.

Community Sponsorship

What is community sponsorship?

Community-based or private sponsorships can be broadly defined as public-private partnerships between governments that facilitate legal admission for refugees and private or community actors who provide financial, social and/or emotional support to receive and settle refugees in local communities.
Community sponsorship offers volunteer groups and private citizens the opportunity to be actively engaged in welcoming and supporting the integration of refugees. The community sponsorship model for welcome and integration can harness local resources in support of both resettlement and other complementary pathways, whilst fostering inclusive communities at local level.
Community sponsorship programmes are characterised by governments and private (non-state) actors sharing responsibilities and costs, and by a wide range of community actors (civil society organisations, regions and cities, faith-based organisations, universities, private business and others) assuming a leading role in welcoming refugees to their local community. Mutual responsibilities are defined in specific frameworks, such as government regulations, Memoranda of Understanding or pilot programmes. These frameworks define targets, roles and responsibilities, programme duration and national and local implementation frameworks

What is the global picture for community sponsorship?

The 2018 Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) calls on states to establish private or community sponsorship programmes that are additional to regular resettlement programmes. Its accompanying Three-Year Strategy on Resettlement and Complementary Pathways envisages community sponsorship as a key tool in achieving the GCR vision of 3 million refugees benefiting from resettlement (1 million) and complementary pathways (2 million) by 2028.

What is happening in Europe?

The European model of community sponsorship has emerged since 2015, when the worsening of the Syrian national conflict saw increased flows of refugees to Europe. Currently, six EU Member States and the UK have established community sponsorship programmes to receive refugees admitted via resettlement and humanitarian admission programmes, and several more are planning future implementation.

In EU policy, community sponsorship is a flexible concept that often overlaps with resettlement and other complementary pathways such as humanitarian corridors. The 2018 Commission Recommendation on Legal Pathways to the EU: promoting resettlement, humanitarian admission and other complementary pathways invites Member States to contribute to ‘an EU approach to community sponsorship to underpin complementary pathways for education and work for those in need of international protection’.

Under the umbrella of the EUAA Resettlement and Humanitarian Admission Network, a working group on community sponsorship was established to facilitate further discussion and exchange on sponsorship in the EU. The group’s primary objective is to promote quality community sponsorship schemes in Member States that underpin resettlement and humanitarian admission programmes, as well as other complementary pathways. The group had its first meeting in March 2021, and meets up to three times a year. Its membership is drawn from Member States, UNHCR, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Global Refugee Sponsorship Initiative and selected civil society organisations. Share has actively participated in the Working Group since its inception, contributing our expertise on sponsorship to all its activities.

The EU provides funding via the Asylum, Migration & Integration Fund (AMIF) to support capacity-building for civil society actors engaged in community sponsorship schemes, and transnational exchange and knowledge sharing to create new and scale up existing community sponsorship programmes.

Whilst acknowledging the role that community sponsorship can play in supporting integration for a range of legal pathways, the EU approach has created some confusion as to the status of community sponsorship as a legal pathway in its own right. The lack of agreement on the proposed Union Resettlement and Humanitarian Admission Framework (URF) has further created uncertainty as to the future framework for community sponsorship in the EU, including in terms of future EU funding to support sponsorship initiatives.

What should the EU do to help?

At Share, we advocate for grassroots, bottom-up development of community sponsorship initiatives in Europe, to create sustainable welcome and integration and build inclusive communities.

That’s why we think the EU must:

  • Maximise the solidarity and benefits of community sponsorship by ensuring it is considered as a legal pathway offering additional reception places (and not solely a way to welcome newcomers).

  • Include community sponsorship in the programming of EU funds (such as the AMIF) to allow for scaling up of efforts in this area.

  • Invest in grassroots and bottom-up approaches to creating community sponsorship protection pathways that are sustainable and support integration.

  • Promote flexible, multistakeholder models for community sponsorship that include clear and transparent mutual responsibilities and resources (state and private/community actors).

  • Promote and expand good practice in community sponsorship, such as the lead sponsor model and participatory approaches for volunteers and refugees.

  • Support monitoring and evaluation of community sponsorship in the EU to create an evidence base for future policy and practice

Integration

What is integration?

Integration is commonly understood to be a two-way process of change, involving both refugees and migrants and the societies that receive them. Integration is an individual process, within which newcomers adapt to their new surroundings and move towards independence and self-sufficiency. It also takes place at local, regional and national levels, when receiving societies provide welcome and create the conditions that enable individual integration to take place.

What is happening in Europe?

Across the European Union, migrants experience significantly poorer outcomes than non-migrants in key areas such as education, employment, poverty, social exclusion and housing. This is particularly true for migrant women and girls, young migrants, and migrants with specific health vulnerabilities.

Within the European Union integration is a national policy competence, meaning that national authorities in Member States create integration policy and determine the integration programmes and interventions that are put in place within their national territories

Although the EU cannot legislate in the field of integration, it can establish of measures to provide incentives and support for the actions of Member States to promote integration for legally residing third-country nationals. EU efforts in this area began as far back as 2004, with the adoption by the European Council of the EU Common Basic Principles for Immigrant Integration Policy (reaffirmed in 2014). In 2011, the European Commission launched the European Agenda for the integration of third-country nationals, followed by the 2016 Action Plan on the integration of third country nationals.

The September 2020 New Pact on Asylum and Migration states that everyone legally present in the EU should be able to ‘participate in and contribute to the well-being, prosperity and cohesion of European societies’, including third country nationals. It describes integration as ‘a key part of the broader EU agenda to promote social inclusion’, and announced a new Action Plan on Integration and Inclusion for 2021-2027 published in November 2020.

The 2021-27 Action Plan includes concrete actions, guidance and details of EU funding for integration and inclusion in four key areas: education and training, employment, health and housing. The Plan does not distinguish between different types of migrants, instead addressing integration for ‘migrants and EU citizens with a migrant background’ who are legally residing in the EU.

Publication of the 2021-27 Action Plan was preceded by a 12-week public consultation. Read our contribution to the consultation ‘Building Welcome from the Ground Up’.

EU funding support for reception and early integration actions and programmes is provided via the Asylum, Migration & Integration Fund (AMIF). This funding is provided for actions at national level via Member State AMIF national programmes, and at EU level to facilitate practical cooperation on integration amongst Member States. Funding for longer term integration and inclusion is available via the European Social Fund+ and other EU funding instruments.

Integration in smaller communities and rural areas

Although larger cities are still hosting the majority of newcomers to the EU, more and more refugees have since 2015 been received by smaller communities and rural territories. Particularly in view of the more ready availability of affordable housing options in these areas, governments have looked to develop dispersal and placement policies that more evenly distribute newcomers across their n territories. Despite public debates on migration and asylum that can be negative, many smaller communities have also shown how they can offer a soft landing and warm welcome for newcomers. Since 2015, at Share we have worked with smaller communities to build their capacities, expand their integration offers and give them a voice in national and European level discussions. 

What are ‘smaller communities and rural areas’ in the EU?

At EU level, regions are classified using the NUTS (Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics) system, which divides the territory of the EU and UK into three types of region:

  • NUTS 1: Major socioeconomic regions (104 regions).

  • NUTS 2: Larger regions (283 regions).

  • NUTS 3: Provinces, 3-4m population (1,345 regions).

The NUTS ‘urban-rural typology’ further classifies NUTS 3 regions using population density to identify the share of the region’s population living in rural areas:

  • 'Predominantly rural': more than 50% of the region’s population living in rural areas.

  • 'Intermediate': 20-50% of the region’s population living in rural areas.

  • 'Predominantly urban': less than 20% of the region’s population living in rural areas

What about refugees and migrants in smaller and rural communities?

Migrants make up 2.9% (3.97m people) of the EU’s rural population. Migrants have grown as a proportion of the EU’s agricultural workforce, from 2.7% in 2011 to 4% in 2017. Migrants from outside the EU now outnumber EU nationals from other Member States in EU agricultural employment.

Smaller and rural communities in the EU have long hosted migrant labourers. Since 2015, when the number of refugees arriving into the EU rapidly increased and national dispersal and placement policies increasingly aimed to more evenly distribute newcomers across national territories, smaller and rural communities are playing an increasingly important role in receiving refugees and other vulnerable groups of newcomers. The expanded role rural territories play in hosting asylum reception facilities has in some instances created new, often transient, populations of newly recognised refugees and/or refused asylum seekers in rural areas.

What is the EU policy picture?

The Action Plan on Integration and Inclusion for 2021-2027, launched by the European Commission in November 2020, acknowledges that while the proportion of migrants in rural populations is relatively low, they tend to fare worse on most indicators of integration not only compared to natives but also with respect to migrants living in cities and towns. The Action Plan sets out various EU measures to address these disparities and support improved integration in smaller and rural areas:

  • A partnership with rural regions in the framework of the Long-term Vision for the EU's Rural Areas.

  • EU funding via the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development.

  • A commitment to exploring and facilitating rural partnerships to ensure inclusion and integration of migrants in rural areas.

In June 2021, the European Commission launched A long-term Vision for the EU's Rural Areas: Towards stronger, connected, resilient and prosperous rural areas by 2040. The Vision addresses the broad disparities between urban and more remote territories that also present challenges for integration, promoting territorial and community-based approaches to rural development and planning a ‘rural proofing’ mechanism to assess the potential impact of EU legislative initiatives on rural areas. Implementation of the Vision will be supported by the forthcoming Rural Pact and EU Rural Action Plan, including the partnership with rural regions envisaged in the Action Plan on Integration and Inclusion for 2021-2027.

What should the EU do to help?

At Share, we believe that rural areas and smaller communities have considerable potential to offer welcome and integration for refugees and migrants, and in particular to provide good quality and affordable housing options. However, they also require sustained and longer term support to effectively meet the integration needs of refugees and migrants.

That’s why we think the EU must:

  • Support and promote territorial or space-based approaches for integration in smaller communities and rural territories, in which regional coordination frameworks support integration capacities and actions in smaller communities and enable differences in terms of migrant populations and integration frameworks across regions to be addressed.

  • Ensure synergies and complementarity across EU funding instruments with respect to integration in smaller and rural communities, including the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development.

  • Improve data on migrant movements and flows between rural and urban locations and on comparative outcomes for migrant and host populations, in order to support better regional and local level planning for integration.

  • Address the lack of access to integration services and support in many rural and more remote territories, including specialist services for vulnerable refugee and migrant groups.

  • Promote and celebrate the contribution of smaller and rural communities to welcoming and supporting the integration of refugees and migrants in the EU.

Participation

Participation is the inclusion of refugees, migrants and local actors in the elaboration, implementation and evaluation of welcome and integration policies, projects and actions at local, national and EU level. Participation enables refugees and migrants to build skills and capacities, take an active role in bringing attention to the issues that affect their lives, and shape the interventions designed to address them.

What is happening in Europe?

In many EU countries, participatory and co-creation methods are fairly widely implemented in sectors such as health and social care. Although there is a developing body of EU good practice in using these approaches in the context of integration, refugees, migrants and host communities are still not consistently included as stakeholders when developing the actions and policies that affect them.

The Action Plan on Integration and Inclusion for 2021-2027, launched by the European Commission in November 2020, promotes migrant participation in consultation and decision-making processes, multistakeholder/multilevel partnerships and cooperation frameworks for integration, and the design and implementation of EU and national integration funding resources.

The Action Plan:

  • Highlights how migrant participation in consultative and decision-making processes contributes to effective integration policies and programmes that reflect real needs.

  • Promotes multi-stakeholder cooperation for integration that involves migrants, refugees and host communities alongside other actors, especially at local level.

  • Commits EU financing for the capacity-building of national, regional and local authorities to involve migrants and migrant organisations in decision-making processes.

  • Recommends Member States involve migrants and migrant organisations in the ‘design, implementation and evaluation’ of all (both EU and non-EU funded) integration and inclusion policies and programmes.

During 2018-19, in the framework of the Urban Agenda, the European Commission established the European Migrant Advisory Board (EMAB). Established as an 18-month pilot programme, the EMAB was designed to address the need to better manage the involvement of migrants and refugees in policymaking processes. It enabled nine individuals from refugee and migrant backgrounds to act as expert advisers for the Partnership on Inclusion of Migrants and Refugees, and as key contributors to its Action Plan on Inclusion of Migrants and Refugees.

Following this pilot action, the European Commission created the Expert Group on the Views of Migrants in the field of Migration, Asylum and Integration. Expert Groups are established by the European Commission to obtain specialist advice from outside experts as a basis for sound policymaking, and refugee and migrant participation has been mainstreamed into this wider structure. Members of the Expert Group on the Views of Migrants were selected via an open call for proposals, and the group first met in November 2020.

What should the EU do to help?

At Share, we believe that refugees and migrants are ‘experts of their own experience’, with unique knowledge and perspectives that can improve integration programmes and policies.

That’s why we think the EU must:

  • Include participatory approaches for integration and inclusion in relevant EU policy and funding instruments, and in the implementation of EU funds at national level.

  • Promote participatory approaches in all phases of designing, implementing and evaluating communitybased sponsorship programmes.

  • Work in partnership with actors in smaller and rural territories to develop and pilot participatory and cocreation approaches for refugee and migrant integration and inclusion.

  • Establish refugee and migrant participation as a core evaluation criteria for integration actions supported by EU funds, including at national level.

  • Promote peer support and mentoring for refugees and migrants engaged in participatory work.

Global refugees responses

What role has EU resettlement played in responses to large-scale global refugee emergencies?

European countries have a long history of contributing to global responses to refugee displacement emergencies via refugee resettlement. Since 1950 Europe has offered resettlement to many thousands of refugees, including Hungarians fleeing following the 1956 revolution, Vietnamese ‘boat people’ escaping the Vietnam War and its aftermath in the late 1970s and 1980s, and those fleeing conflict and the break-up of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Joint EU resettlement in response to global refugee movements began in 2009 with a programme to receive 10,000 refugees from Iraq by 2009, in which 12 Member States participated. The ‘refugee crisis’ beginning in 2015, prompted by the large-scale movement of Syrian refugees seeking to escape the ongoing national conflict, led to renewed solidarity in EU resettlement. EU Member States subsequently came together to implement programmes to receive 20,000 (2015-17) and 50,000 (2018-19) resettled refugees. To respond to the Afghan crisis, in 2021 Member States pledged to resettle 20.000 refugees and admit 40.000 Afghans at Risk.

How is the EU responding to the current crisis in Afghanistan?

Despite this recent history of joint resettlement to address global needs, European countries have been slow to respond to the crisis in Afghanistan, which arose in summer 2021 as a result of the rapid withdrawal of US forces and the return to power of the Taliban.

Evacuations of military staff and some Afghans at risk were carried out by a number of European countries directly from Kabul, and at August 2021 around 22,000 people had been evacuated to 24 EU Member States. But almost 664,000 Afghans are newly internally displaced since the beginning of 2021, adding to the approximately three million already internally displaced at the end of 2020. There is thus a pressing need for Member States to continue to provide protection for the most vulnerable people within Afghanistan, and for Afghan nationals displaced in countries of the region.

To date the EU’s action have focused on securing borders and reinforcing support to neighboring countries hosting refugees, including via a €1 billion Afghan support package. Despite calls from UNHCR at the EU High Level Forum on Resettlement in Afghanistan on 7 October for EU Member States to accept half of the 85,000 Afghans in need over the next five years, and a statement from the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs and Migration that the EU can resettle 42,500 Afghans during this period, few resettlement pledges have been made by Member States and no deadline has been set. In 2021 Member States pledged to admit 40.000 Afghans at Risk and at the end of 2022, 41.500 Afghan nationals admitted.

What should the EU do to help?

At Share, we believe that the EU and its Member States have the capacity, expertise and resources to take a leading role in global responses to refugee emergencies. Where such crises occur, EU Member States must expand resettlement and other pathways to protection, in order to live up to European commitments to refugee protection and humanitarian leadership, and share responsibility with countries neighbouring Afghanistan.

That’s why we think the EU must:

  • Launch a special programme for the resettlement and complementary pathways for Afghan refugees, in addition to the 2022 resettlement programme.

  • Use all available legal pathways to immediately bring people in need of protection to safety from Afghanistan and the region, with predictable and secure protection upon arrival. This includes, for instance, an expanded and flexible use of family reunification, humanitarian visas, community sponsorships, higher education scholarships and work visas.

  • Ensure predictable, multiannual funding to support Member State efforts to extend resettlement and other pathways of protection to Afghan nationals.

  • Ensure that evacuations and humanitarian admissions remain additional to resettlement and are not counted toward annual resettlement quotas.

  • Uphold access to a fair and full asylum process for Afghan and other nationals in Europe, while supporting their inclusion, integration, and participation in society.

  • Urgently review all rejected asylum cases of Afghan nationals, and formally suspend all deportations to the region.

EU solidarity measures

What do we mean by solidarity within the EU?

Resettlement and complementary pathways are a means for the EU and its Member States to express solidarity with countries hosting the majority of the world’s refugees. Within the EU, Member States can also take action to express solidarity with those Member States at the EU’s borders that receive the vast majority of new arrivals entering the EU in search of protection.

What is the policy picture for solidarity within the EU?

Relocation

Relocation refers to the organised transfer of asylum seekers from one EU Member State to another. Prior to 2020, it was the key measure by which Member States could express solidarity with one another in the context of migration.

During 2015-18, two decisions of the European Council made provision for the relocation of 160,000 persons from Greece and Italy. While the first 40,000 of this number were received by Member States voluntarily engaging in relocation, the remaining 120,000 were to be distributed amongst receiving Member States using a mandatory distribution key.

Member States engaged in relocation received a lump sum of €6,000 per person received, provided via the 2014-20 Asylum, Migration & Integration Fund (AMIF). Receiving Member States were free to decide the type of reception and integration arrangements they would put in place for relocated persons. By September 2018, Member States had received a total of 34,705 persons relocated from Greece and Italy, just 21.6% of the originally planned 160,000 persons.

In early 2020, inhumane conditions in vastly overcrowded reception camps on the Greek islands led to calls from civil society and others for Member States to voluntarily relocate vulnerable asylum seekers. By June 2021, 13 Member States has received just over 4,000 persons from the island camps, including just under 1,000 unaccompanied children.

Relocation in the context of disembarkation of refugees rescued in the Mediterranean, remains voluntary, and is carried out on the basis of bilateral agreements between Member States. Funding to support these activities is available via the 2021-27 Asylum, Migration & Integration Fund (AMIF), within AMIF national programmes.

Solidarity measures under the New Pact

Intra-EU solidarity continues to divide opinion amongst European countries. The New Pact on Asylum and Migration, launched by the European Commission in September 2020, therefore proposed a Regulation on Asylum and Migration Management which specifies a range of voluntary solidarity and responsibility-sharing mechanisms. It proposes a new mechanism for states experiencing migratory pressure, including through boat arrivals, triggered by the European Commission or via a request from the affected state. Following this, the European Commission would propose a plan to distribute asylum seekers amongst Member States using a key based on GDP and population aiming to ‘replace the Dublin regulation with a new asylum and migration management system’.

EU Member States not wishing to engage in relocation could instead:

  • Elect to ‘sponsor’ the return of asylum seekers to their countries of origin, by assuming responsibility for their return on behalf of another Member State. If the return does not take place within 8 months, the asylum seeker would be relocated to the sponsoring state.

  • Assist affected ‘frontline’ Member States with expertise or practical help, such as managing reception facilities.

Member States refusing any of these options could be sanctioned, although a mechanism to do so is yet to be defined. At the time of writing, the proposed Regulation is yet to be agreed.

What should the EU do to help?

At Share, we believe that solidarity mechanisms should be about improving protection and reception standards and not creating additional risks of rights violations. We believe that existing family reunion procedures and the expansion of voluntary relocation must be used more extensively to protect people on the move, to improve migration management and ease tensions at various borders. We are extremely concerned at the proposal for ‘solidarity’ to be expressed by deporting people.

Solidarity and responsibility sharing in the EU asylum and migration system must prioritise safe routes to family reunion and international protection, not containment, pushbacks and returns

That’s why we think the EU must:

  • Delete return sponsorship from the options of solidarity contributions.

  • Introduce binding solidarity instruments, including practical and financial support and expanding relocation as the preferred mechanism for solidarity and responsibility sharing for beneficiaries of international protection.

  • Set out clear and predictable commitments for relocation and avoid political manoeuvring, for example by fixing indicative annual ‘solidarity quota’, supplemented with a correction mechanism to adapt – by lowering or increasing the quota – to the real needs.

  • Expand relocation, and promote and fund city and community relocation schemes, building on previous municipal, civil society and grassroots initiatives to support relocation efforts. Such relocation initiatives can use community sponsorship models to support arrivals in welcome and integration.

  • Ensure the European Commission has options to sanction Member States that do not comply with solidarity measures and pledges.

  • Establish a clearly defined framework for the European Commission’s assessment on migratory pressure and an adequate information sharing system with the European Parliament.

  • Ensure the right to an effective remedy for all people subjected to the application of the system of determination of the responsible Member State.

  • Clearly establish, in line with jurisprudence, that the Member State responsible for the asylum application of an unaccompanied child is the one in which the child is present (unless this is not found to be in the best interests of the child).

  • Ensure that family and other meaningful links to a Member State are proactively taken into account and enforced with priority and consistency by the national authorities.