SOLIDARITY AND EXTERNALIZATION OF SECURITY IN EU MIGRATION AND ASYLUM POLICY. A DOUBLE-FOLDED CONCEPT?

Abstract

The Refugee crisis of 2015-2016 deeply impacted upon the European Union and its
member states, Union creating almost a system collapse in EU’s asylum and migration
policy and leaving great division among EU Member states. Various attempts were made
to facilitate solidarity and to create a treaty-based mechanism that would ensure fair sharing
of responsibility for asylum seekers among EU Member States, still these actions have not
brought to a concrete outcome. Instead, cooperation with third countries has been strengthened,
especially to secure EU external borders, to reduce the number of irregular migrants and
prevent illegal migration. Therefore, against the backdrop of internal solidarity, where internal
solidarity refers to the solidarity shown between Member states, between the European Union
as a whole and its Member States, or between EU citizens and third-country nationals present
in the EU; the EU strengthened external solidarity which refers to solidarity by EU towards
people in third countries who are fleeing from war, persecution, hunger or violent conflicts in
their country of origin and solidarity with third countries that currently receive huge numbers
of refugees fleeing war, persecution and hunger in neighboring countries. Therefore, this
paper will look at the principle of solidarity of the European Union through its internal and
external dimension, and the possible match of the external dimension of solidarity with the
externalization of security in EU’s asylum and migration policy.