As it could be clearly seen by examining the present legislative and policy-making processes, there has been a tendency to push for urgent asylum reforms by outspokenly leaving some behind, which the legal provisions of the qualified majority voting in the Council explicitly
68 Available: www.visegradgroup.eu/about (Accessed: 30.11.2017)
69 Börzel, Tanja A. – Risse, Thomas eds. (2016): Theorizing Regionalism: Cooperation, Integration and Governance. The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Regionalism. 4–5. Available: http://aei.pitt.edu/78876/1/
Borzel.pdf (Accessed: 30.11.2017)
70 The Constitutional Court declared in its decision No. 22/2016. (XII.6.) AB that Hungary’s constitutional identity is rooted in its alleged historical constitution and is “a fundamental value not created by the Funda-mental Law – it is merely acknowledged by the FundaFunda-mental Law.” See in this regard Nagy-Nádasdi, Anita Rozália – Kőhalmi, Barbara (2017): Hungarian Constitutional Identity and the ECJ Decision on Refugee Quota. Verfassungsblog on Matters Constitutional, 8 September 2017. Available: http://verfassungsblog.de/
hungarian-constitutional-identity-and-the-ecj-decision-on-refugee-quota/ (Accessed: 30.11.2017)
71 As a recent evaluation regarding the Visegrád Four in the EU see Dostál, Vít – Végh, Zsuzsanna (2017):
Trends of Visegrad European Policy. Association for International Affairs, (AMO), 23.11.2017. Available:
www.amo.cz/en/trends-of-visegrad-european-policy/trends-of-visegrad-european-policy-203/ (Accessed:
30.11.2017)
allows. The question is therefore, whether even in such a legal framework the Member States will still try to seek consensus in order to have a higher willingness as regards im-plementation of EU rules. In this regard, the theory of intergovernmentalism describes more authentically how the response to the European migration crisis has so far been adopted, nevertheless some major elements of the reform of the CEAS is still ahead of us.
The motto of the EU, unity in diversity therefore raises the question whether diversity will still be kept in order to reach a higher level of unity or not. The V4 could therefore bring more diversity in the perspectives that need to be taken into account when adopting new asylum reforms. Even if providing counterweight to mainstream European asylum policy has not always been successful due to the European legislative provisions, the fact that the V4 is already considered a regional cooperation to consult when major reforms are planned is already a great achievement in itself.
The issue of migration and asylum, with a special focus on the necessary reforms, has recently been in the focus of the meetings of the European Council. On its meeting on 22–23 June 2017 the European Council reaffirmed its previous conclusions on the reform of CEAS and stated that “there is a common understanding that the reformed CEAS needs to strike the right balance between responsibility and solidarity and that it needs to ensure resilience to future crises. The system has to be efficient, be able to withstand migratory pressure, eliminate pull factors as well as secondary movements, in compliance with international law, fight abuse and provide adequate support to the most affected Member States.”72 The European Council once again reiterated this call in its conclusions on 19 October 2017, and also set a clear plan by stating that it “will return to this matter at its meeting in December, and will seek to reach a consensus during the first half of 2018.” 73
It is interesting to see that although no unanimity would legally be required by the Treaties to adopt future reforms of the CEAS, Member States still commit themselves to seek consensus. This clearly shows the fact that the immediate actions adopted in 2015 not having been supported by some of the Member States could not produce the results the majority of Member States aimed at. This would even be more so in the case of long-term reforms, consequently, since effective implementation of the reforms is a key aspect, the widest support should be a common interest of the Member States for the reforms during their adoption.
EU leaders held a debate on the external and internal dimensions of the EU migration policy on 14 December 2017. They assessed what has and has not worked in the past two years, and discussed how to strengthen the policy. The debate was based on a note circulated by President Tusk ahead of the summit,74 which had an unusually honest tone and stated that “the issue of mandatory quotas has proven to be highly divisive and the approach has received disproportionate attention in light of its impact on the ground; in this sense it has turned out to be ineffective.”75 The discussion aimed, amongst others, to pave the way towards an agreement on the reform of the asylum system by June 2018. President Tusk, in his remarks after the meeting of the European Council also focused on the most
controver-72 Available: www.consilium.europa.eu/media/23985/22-23-euco-final-conclusions.pdf (Accessed: 30.11.2017)
73 Available: www.consilium.europa.eu/media/21620/19-euco-final-conclusions-en.pdf (Accessed: 30.11.2017)
74 Available: www.consilium.europa.eu//media/32083/en_leaders-agenda-note-on-migration_.pdf (Accessed:
20.12.2017)
75 Ibid.
sial element of the reforms of the CEAS: “Mandatory quotas remain a contentious issue, although its temperature has decreased significantly. If only for this reason, it was worth raising this topic. Will a compromise be possible? It appears very hard. But we have to try our very best.”76
This confirms that Member States shall first and foremost seek consensus, because a reform of the CEAS that only bears the support of a qualified majority of states according to the preference of the larger member ones cannot provide a result that will effectively be followed and implemented by all Member States, especially in case the reforms are contra-dicting their constitutional identity.
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76 President Tusk’s remarks following the European Council meetings on 14 and 15 December 2017.