Sustainable asylum responsibility distribution in the European Union: A case for tradable refugee quotas as a replacement for the Dublin Regulation

Achieving an optimal distribution of the state-by-state responsibility for granting asylum to refugees has been a longstanding challenge in the European Union. This challenge has been especially apparent in the last several years following the escalation of conflicts, particularly including the civil war in Syria, which has prompted hundreds of thousands of refugees to seek asylum in the EU by making dangerous crossings into the territory of the union's southernmost member states, which are the member states that are the least well-equipped to care for large quantities of refugees. This paper offers a critique of the Dublin Regulation, which forms the cornerstone of EU refugee policy, and the way its asylum responsibility determination criteria have failed to both incentivize resettlement contributions and sustainably distribute asylum responsibility amongst member states, thus creating conditions that have ultimately victimized thousands of refugees seeking asylum in the EU, Second, this paper examines the viability of implementing a tradable refugee quota system as a replacement for the Dublin Regulation in order to utilize market mechanisms to incentivize resettlement contributions and achieve a more sustainable distribution of asylum responsibility that will ultimately serve to provide durable resettlement solutions to a greater number of refugees.