The EU has not succeeded in developing a uniform approach in response to the exceptionally high number of asylum seekers entering Europe. Instead, the EU’s recent handling of irregular migration...Show moreThe EU has not succeeded in developing a uniform approach in response to the exceptionally high number of asylum seekers entering Europe. Instead, the EU’s recent handling of irregular migration has been marked by unilateral action, mutual accusations and political deadlock. Moreover, the European migration crisis of 2015 has demonstrated that the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) is unable to handle migratory pressure and actually stimulates secondary movements. However, the current East-West divide prevents the emergence of any meaningful compromise that would allow the CEAS to be successfully reformed. For this reason, the question examined by this thesis is whether the CEAS can be reformed through using differentiation and if so, how and to what extent this would be possible. In order to answer this question, three topics surrounding EU asylum and migration policy are discussed, i.e. Schengen, external border management and the relocation program. The analysis of this thesis concludes that differentiation cannot be applied to Schengen and is not required to enhance external border management because of an emerging consensus. Still, differentiation does have the potential to improve the functioning of the relocation program but this would require member states to centralize their asylum policies, something that is unlikely to happen in the near future. Even so, a coalition of the willing should aim to reform the CEAS into a centralized EU asylum system because only then will the EU be able to effectively control high levels of irregular migration into Europe.Show less
