Central Europe’s Flexible Approach to Rights and Obligations of EU Membership • Lucia Najšlová (Charles University, Prague)

The twofold increase of asylum applications in the EU in 2015 led many to talk about a ‘migration crisis’ or ‘refugee crisis.’ However, such framing obscures the fact that Europe has received only a fraction of people fleeing the wars in its neighborhood. Instead of discussing ‘crisis,’ it is analytically more productive to look at the limits of EU solidarity on several levels: between the member states, with neighboring countries, and with asylum-seekers. Migration governance has become heavily securitized in the past decades, and thus while the EU quickly agreed on joint border protection, sharing responsibility for refugees is still in limbo. In this talk, Dr. Najšlová will focus on a ‘flexible solidarity’ approach advocated by the Central European (V4) states. With this approach, the rejection of obligation towards selected others (southern member states, neighbors, refugees) is justified as a right, which those others are obliged to respect. The case of the Turkey-EU refugee deal will be of a particular interest here.

Lucia Najšlová, PhD, is Lecturer in the Department of European Studies at Charles University in Prague. She is a member of the external advisory team of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic and a chief editor of V4Revue, a long-form journalism portal on society and politics in Central Europe. She has published extensively on the EU external relations, with a particular emphasis on the EU’s enlargement and neighborhood policies, the EU’s leverage as a democracy promoter, and perceptions of the EU (and the West) among neighbors and membership candidates.
 
This talk is made possible by University Studies Grant from the International Visegrad Fund.