Activists hold banners protesting the refugee-migration crisis in front of the Parthenon temple on the Acropolis hill in Athens, Greece, on Sept. 5, 2017. Marios Lolos/ Press Association. All rights reserved.The EU Relocation programme, which aimed to relocate 160,000 people in need of international protection from Greece and Italy to the other member states over a two-year period, came to an end on 26 September. After two of years of tortuous implementation, less than 28,000 eligible people, or 17.5 per cent of the total planned target, were relocated under the programme.
While Hungary and Poland, the most outspoken opponents to the compulsory migrant quota scheme, have failed to relocate a single migrant over the two-year implementation period, more than 20 member states have actually under-performed on their legally binding commitments by at least 50 percent.
Considering that the migrant relocation programme has clearly shown that compulsory solidarity in such a sensitive area as migration policy is a notion that might never be endorsed, at least in practice, by most member states, the question must now be asked whether efforts should still be pursued to renew the existing scheme in one form or another. And if this is not to be the case, whether the absence of a compulsory solidary regime will be likely to make any difference to the EU’s current immigration policy environment.
