A Normative View from the Periphery: Serbia and the EU Asylum Acquis

Since 2014, as part of the EU accession negotiations, Serbia is meticulously conducting legal, policy, and institutional reforms in order to align its asylum and migration law and policy with the EU acquis. At the same time, as a consequence of the European policies put in place since 2015 (fences, large-scale pushbacks), Serbia faces a high risk of becoming a buffer zone in between EU Member States Greece and Bulgaria (whence many refugees enter Serbia) and Croatia and Hungary (which many refugees seek to enter).

While aiming to implement EU law as a candidate Member State, Serbia is simultaneously trying to avoid stronger migration pressure and becoming a hotspot which are the consequence of implementing the EU acquis. Caught between these two conflicting policy aims, Serbia is following the example of Greece in limiting migration pressure by keeping its asylum system dysfunctional, ignoring refugee needs and undermining refugee protection. The substandard character of the Serbian asylum system in practice (both when it comes to its slow and inefficient asylum procedure, limited access to legal aid and information, as well as when it comes to an unsustainable and dysfunctional reception and integration system) makes returns to Serbia a violation of European Human Rights law (i.a., ECtHR 21 November 2019, Ilias and Ahmed v Hungary, application no. 47287/15), while it also gives migrants and refugees a strong incentive to move on to the EU.

This combination of formally adopting, but not implementing, the EU acquis will be analysed as a normative response to the perceived lack of legitimacy of the EU acquis, which uses the weak position of peripheral Member States like Greece and neighbouring countries like Serbia to impose a disproportionate burden on them.