The Collective Action Problem and the European Integration : The Development of Asylum Policy and the Uneven Burden Sharing

Academic Paper from the year 2013 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: European Union, Aalborg University, language: English, abstract: This project aims to explore the mechanisms behind the solving of collective problems in integrated regions. One of the most successful cases of regional integration is the EU. For the past 60 years the process of integration has been developing in the EU towards a deeper integration of its members. The goal of this process is that - by acting as a unit - the EU can deal more effectively with the problems that require a regional approach. However, this is a slow process and it is still far from being fully accomplished. The integration process requires the willingness of the members to adjust their national law to the regional interest which in some areas has been hard to achieve. One of those areas is the EU Migration and Asylum policy that affects all the EU members and has been one of the most difficult matters to achieve an effective cooperation. Therefore this project explores these weaknesses by highlighting the lack of solidarity between the EU members and the uneven burden-sharing that contributes to an ineffective EU policy on this issue.