The EU’s Dublin system, which assigns responsibility for processing asylum claims to the first EU member state an asylum seeker enters, has been widely criticised. Yet as Philipp Lutz, Florian Trauner and Philipp Stutz show, the seemingly unfair principle at the heart of the system produces surprisingly fair outcomes in practice.
The European Dublin system, which coordinates which EU member state is responsible for processing an asylum application, has long served as a convenient scapegoat for ill-functioning European asylum governance.
Widely criticised as unfair, it has now been officially retired – though largely in name only, as its core rules persist under the EU’s new Pact on Migration and Asylum. But is the system’s reputation for unfairness actually deserved?
In a new study, we provide the first systematic analysis of the fairness outcomes produced by Dublin transfers and find that, contrary to the prevailing narrative, the transfers between member states have modestly contributed to a fairer distribution of asylum responsibilities rather than a less fair one.
Why fairness matters
Distributing responsibility for processing asylum applications fairly across EU member states has been one of the most persistent challenges in European asylum governance. The reality is starkly asymmetric: some countries receive far more asylum seekers than others, and this has attracted criticism from all corners of the EU for decades.
Much of the blame has been directed at the Dublin III Regulation, which assigns responsibility for examining an asylum claim primarily to the first EU member state an asylum seeker enters. Southern European countries at the EU’s external borders have denounced the system for placing disproportionate burdens on them simply because of their geography.
Central and Eastern European states, meanwhile, have resisted binding relocation quotas as an unfair imposition on their sovereignty. And Northern destination countries have complained about the system’s limited effectiveness in managing onward movements of asylum seekers within the EU. In short, nearly everyone agrees Dublin is unfair – albeit for very different reasons.
From June 2026, the Asylum and Migration Management Regulation replaces Dublin as part of the EU’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum. Presented as a historic breakthrough, it introduces a solidarity mechanism obliging all member states to contribute to the collective management of asylum applications. Yet the key principle of assigning responsibility to the state of first entry remains firmly in place. This makes understanding Dublin’s actual track record all the more important.
What the evidence shows
Systematic empirical evidence on how Dublin transfers have affected the distribution of asylum responsibilities has been remarkably scarce. In our study, we address this gap using official Eurostat statistics on Dublin transfers across 31 countries from 2008 to 2024 – covering over half a million reported transfers.
To assess fairness, we use the EU’s own distribution key, based on population size and GDP, as a benchmark for what each member state could be expected to contribute. This allows us to classify every Dublin transfer as fair (reducing distributional asymmetry), unfair (increasing it) or neutral (no effect). We apply this classification at two levels: the EU-wide system level and the level of individual country pairs (dyads).
The results are clear. At both levels, a significant share of transfers are neutral, meaning they merely swap responsibilities without any redistributive effect. This confirms existing criticisms about the system’s limited effectiveness. However, among transfers that do have a redistributive impact, the fair ones consistently outnumber the unfair ones by a ratio of approximately two to one.
Why do Dublin transfers produce fairer outcomes?
The finding that Dublin transfers modestly improve fairness among states is counter-intuitive. If the system assigns responsibility to first-entry countries, shouldn’t transfers back to the periphery make things worse, not better? We examined three potential explanations.
First, courts have repeatedly blocked transfers to countries with deficient asylum systems, most notably Greece after landmark rulings in 2011. Could these suspensions be responsible for shifting the system from unfairness to fairness? Our analysis shows that while suspensions modestly shape the balance, fair transfers continue to outnumber unfair ones even when suspension periods are excluded. This is not the main driver.
Second, only around 10 per cent of Dublin requests result in actual transfers. Perhaps states selectively pursue fair transfers while dropping unfair ones? We tested this by simulating scenarios in which all requests or all positive decisions led to transfers. The resulting distributions are broadly similar to the observed ones. Selective implementation does not explain the pattern either.
Instead, the explanation that best fits the data is structural. Many asylum seekers do not stay in their country of first entry but move onward to preferred destinations in Northern and Western Europe, such as Germany or Sweden.
As a result, Northern countries end up with large numbers of asylum applications that push them above their fair share, while many first-entry states remain below theirs. When Northern countries then initiate Dublin transfers back to the periphery, these transfers paradoxically move in a direction that reduces distributional asymmetry.
In other words, the fairness of Dublin transfers is not the product of deliberate policy design. It emerges as an unintended byproduct of asylum seekers’ secondary movements and the system’s partial implementation. While the full application of Dublin’s rules would overburden the South, complete non-application would overburden the North. The actual system operates thus in an equilibrium between these extremes – one that happens to modestly improve fairness.
What this means for the EU’s new asylum rules
These findings carry important implications for the implementation of the EU’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum. The new solidarity mechanism formalises what the Dublin system achieved only accidentally – a degree of redistributive fairness. But formalisation brings its own risks. If member states selectively implement solidarity tools, this could create new opportunities for shirking or shifting responsibilities rather than sharing them.
Our study highlights the value of systematic transparency about the distributive effects of EU asylum rules. The gap between the perception of Dublin as deeply unfair and the more nuanced empirical reality is striking.
If partial implementation inadvertently fosters fairness, then a clear trade-off emerges between stricter enforcement of first-entry rules – through measures like tighter compliance controls in the new Pact – and maintaining a system that, however imperfectly, redistributes responsibility in the right direction.
Creating greater transparency about fairness outcomes may be the most practical step forward. It would allow policymakers and the public to assess whether the new solidarity mechanism is genuinely improving responsibility-sharing or merely reshuffling the same imbalances under a different name.
For more information, see the authors’ new study in European Union Politics.
Note: This article gives the views of the authors, not the position of LSE European Politics or the London School of Economics.
Image credit: Mircea Moira provided by Shutterstock.
