The Double Standard in the EU's Treatment of Refugees from Ukraine and the Global South
As signatories to the conventions, all EU member states commit themselves to protecting refugees on European territory. Significantly, the principle of non-rouflement in Article 33 of the convention prohibits contracting states from forcibly returning refugees to their countries of origin. Despite customary international law, EU migration policy directly contradicts the principle of non-rouflement, mainly through policies designed to externalize responsibility for migration. Photo by Collab Media.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, roughly 8 million people have fled Ukraine. The EU’s response to this influx of refugees has been unprecedented. The Union invoked a temporary protection mechanism that ensures that refugees have residency rights, rights to the European labor market, access to housing and social welfare, and medical assistance—all of which can be extended until March 2025. These protections are automatic for Ukrainian refugees, and those fleeing do not have to apply for asylum.
At face value, the EU’s response to this influx of refugees appears to privilege humanitarian concerns and the rights of refugees, but Europe’s response is also deeply entrenched in political calculation. Rather than prove its commitment to the 1951 refugee conventions, the solidarity and willingness to accommodate people fleeing from Ukraine reflect Europe’s desire to project a united front against Russian aggression. Geopolitically, it is in Europe’s interest to evoke the Temporary Protection Directive, whereas it seems the Union lacks the political incentive to accommodate refugees from the Global South and Middle East.
EU migration policy consists of a series of policy measures, specific deals, development programs, international agreements, and frameworks, as well as the political rhetoric surrounding migration. In theory, EU migration policy is beholden to the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. In the context of the tumultuous post-WWII period, the conventions attempted to solidify a set of international rules regarding refugees’ rights and the responsibilities of states to protect the rights of vulnerable populations. The conventions define a refugee as someone who is outside of their home country for fear of persecution relating to reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.
As signatories to the conventions, all EU member states commit themselves to protecting refugees on European territory. Significantly, the principle of non-rouflement in Article 33 of the convention prohibits contracting states from forcibly returning refugees to their countries of origin. Despite customary international law, EU migration policy directly contradicts the principle of non-rouflement, mainly through policies designed to externalize responsibility for migration. The logic of externalization assumes that through return and readmission agreements, and a focus on strengthening the EU’s external borders, the EU can essentially outsource migrant control to periphery states—such as Turkey, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia—that share a border with EU- states. This strategy was particularly visible in the 2015 EU-Turkey deal when Turkey agreed to accept the return of all migrants crossing from Turkey into Greece in exchange for a 6-billion-euro package and the reenergizing of EU accession negotiations and visa liberalization. Essentially the EU was able to pay Turkey to act as a buffer against migrants attempting to enter the EU from the Greek Islands.
The EU invests more money in removal centers and offshore detention centers than in refugee protection and resettlement. For example, the EU has essentially paid countries like Libya to enact stricter border controls and harsher detention facilities to stave off migrants from reaching EU soil through programs like the Emergency Trust Fund for Africa. Recently, the legality of EU externalization policy has been increasingly called into question. For example, the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights argues that the EU’s funding of the Libyan Coast Guard to obstruct refugees who attempt to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Europe constitutes a crime against humanity.
Claire Loughnan captures EU migration policy in the term “active neglect”; whereas neglect implies passivity, Loughan explains how Europe’s policies towards refugees and migrants systematically deprive people of their rights under international human rights law by framing refugees and migrants as security threats rather than human beings who deserve protection in the international system. Recent double standards in the EU’s treatment of refugees from the Middle East and Africa and from Ukraine further illustrate the disregard for humanitarian concerns.
In the fall of 2021, Alexander Lukashenko, the authoritarian leader of Belarus, invited thousands of migrants and asylum seekers, primarily Kurds from Iraq and Syria, to Belarus. He promised them easy access to the EU, bused migrants to Belarus’s western border, and left them in large, unprotected encampments. Despite numerous UN treaties and EU laws designed to protect asylum seekers, border guards from Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland employed tear gas, water cannons, and rubber bullets to deter the refugees from crossing into the EU. Poland’s response to the crisis involved fortifying its border, employing troops, and allowing border guards to expel migrants and reject asylum requests. These responses constitute a breach of international law and a violation of the principle of non-refoulement.
By playing on the EU’s fear-based approach to migration, Mr. Lukashenko was essentially able to weaponize 3,000 to 4,000 migrants as an existential threat to EU sovereignty and territorial integrity. Official statements and responses by EU members, by treating the coercive tactic as a “crisis,” gave power to Mr. Lukashenko’s rhetoric, thus strengthening his techniques. A statement by President Von der Leyen on the situation at the border between Poland and Belarus referred to the “instrumentalisation of migrants for political purposes by Belarus” as “unacceptable.” EU diplomat Josep Borrel used the term “hybrid war” to refer to the coercive tactics employed by Lukashenko.
In addition to public statements condemning Mr. Lukashenko’s tactics, in December 2021, the European Commission presented a proposal for a regulation designed to address situations of the instrumentalization of migrants in the field and asylum. These proposals enable member states facing a situation of instrumentalisation to “immediately restrict border-crossing points and increase border surveillance.” They also include support for return agreements through cooperation with third countries, further externalizing the EU’s responsibility for addressing migration and the needs of refugees to periphery regions. These proposals focus largely on specific emergency migration mechanisms and asylum management procedures, but much like Europe’s historical approach to migration, do virtually nothing to address the root causes of migration and to privilege respect for human rights.
A double standard has emerged in Europe’s migration policies between people fleeing from the Middle East and Africa and refugees from Ukraine. The EU framed 3,000 migrants, mainly Kurds from Iraq and Syria, as a security threat during the 2021 Belarus-Poland border crisis; yet the EU has successfully settled roughly 8 million refugees from Ukraine. These recent events illustrate the extent to which the EU’s integration capacity is impacted by larger geopolitical considerations. European politicians actively frame certain mass migrations as a state security threat, while accommodating others. It’s important to note that the incident at the Belarusian border, although purposefully orchestrated by Lukeshnko, does not change the commitment the EU has under international law to protect refugees on European soil. The EU could have condemned Lukeshenko’s tactics, whilst still providing humanitarian aid and protection to the refugees on the Polish border.
By comparing the EU’s official responses to the Belarusian border crisis and the Ukrainian refugee crisis, it becomes clear that the EU systematically deprives certain groups of refugees of their rights, while protecting others. Put simply, one was cast as an existential crisis, whilst one accommodated in an organized, cooperative manner. The reason for protecting refugee rights under international customary law is to ensure that refugee protections are not at the whim of state-centric, geopolitical considerations. Increasingly though, the EU strategically evokes and dismisses humanitarian principles and concerns at the political convenience of politicians.
As it stands, European Union migration policy is a term so broad that, in essence, it refers to nothing but the illusion of a cooperative, integrated effort to manage migration. Although still paying lip service to humanitarian values, migration policy in Europe increasingly operates solely under a securitized, state-centric framework that enables states to shirk their responsibility to protect human rights. Europe’s approach to migration revolves around keeping migrants out at all costs by strengthening the EU’s external borders; it finds strength through the instrumentalization of fear by painting the magined “migrant”-other as “violent” and a drain on government resources. Strikingly, despite being an institution premised on the belief that multilateral institutions foster cooperation and stability, EU migration policy does very little to establish cooperation between member states for the resettlement of migrants and refugees within the Schengen Zone.
The EU has successfully framed migration as largely a matter of state security, where migrants and refugees pose a threat to the imagined solidarity of Europe. In reality a lack of institutionalized procedures for dealing with migration internally and an ineffective burden-sharing responsibility for asylum seekers explain why the EU encounters a crisis during each abrupt migration influx.
Emily Swan is a Staff Writer at CPR and a senior at Barnard studying political science and English. She is interested in immigration policy, human rights and journalism. In her free time, you’ll most likely find her drinking overpriced coffee, reading and spending time with friends.