Some light reading for anyone struggling to get to sleep at night, about the effectiveness of the Dublin Agreement in reducing asylum seeker numbers to the UK……
The recent outcome
2. The UK has participated in the Dublin process since it was inaugurated in 1990. Its most recent iteration - Regulation 604/2013 (Dublin III) - decides which nation is responsible for processing asylum claims. A hierarchy of considerations, including whether minor claimants have family in the UK and the first EU country of arrival, are to be taken into account (for more, read our paper: '
Asylum and the European Union - The Dublin Regulations'). The effectiveness of the system from the UK’s point of view has declined dramatically in recent years. Home Office statistics reveal that, while there were a total of 676 returns of asylum seekers
from the UK to other European countries under the rules in 2016 and 2017, 1,019 asylum seekers were transferred to the UK. The figures reveal that the balance has shifted since 2015, when 131 people were transferred to the UK, against 510 people who transferred
out.
Table 1: Transfers in to the UK and out of the UK under the Dublin regulation
Year Transfers in to the UK Transfers out of the UK
2015 131 510
2016 558 362
2017 461 314
3. Even more strikingly, the Dublin Regulation inflow to the UK in the year 2018 was
nearly six times the outflow. As the Home Office
noted in February 2019: "
There were 1,215 transfers into the UK under the Dublin Regulation. The majority (946) of these transfers came from Greece. There were just 209 transfers out of the UK under the Dublin Regulation. A quarter of these (51) were transfers to France."
4. The figures show that a larger number of transfers
to the UK during the period were under articles 8 and 9 of the Regulation. These stipulate that, under certain conditions, the applications of some of those in EU countries, whose relatives are already in the UK, should be dealt with by the UK. In contrast, a larger number transfers
out were under Article 13, which mandates that asylum seekers who move on after being registered in a country of first arrival can be returned to that country. It was also revealed that the 2017 figures of 461 transfers in (against 314 transfers out) came despite the fact that there were over twice as many requests under the Dublin rules to transfer out (5,712) than requests to transfer asylum seekers into the UK (2,137).