Human Rights and the EU's Responsibilities towards Refugees

Abstract

This chapter examines the implications of human rights for how refugees should be treated. It focuses on the EU and its member states and understands human rights as an idea of minimal global justice, the core of which is the reliable protection of the very important interests of all humans. The guiding assumption of the chapter is that (a sincere commitment to) human rights must have genuine practical consequences, but this does not imply that all refugees who seek to enter a country, or the EU, have to be admitted. So what exactly a commitment to human rights implies for how refugees should be treated is a real question. The chapter defends the claim that based on human rights, the EU has the responsibility to admit refugees at least up to the point where sizeable costs for its citizens arise – even if admitting them up to that point means doing more than a suitably specified fair share. It also considers objections to this claim and concludes by briefly discussing the question of whether the fact that the EU commits itself to human rights makes any difference in how it should act towards refugees.