(AFP) Since taking in more than a million people fleeing war and poverty in 2015, Europe has stepped up border controls but still falls short on common migration and asylum policies.
At the time, the migrant crisis “laid bare Europe’s structural flaws and political divisions,” said Marie De Somer, a migration specialist at the European Policy Centre.
Until 2015, the Dublin regulation had called for the first EU country where asylum seekers arrived to deal with their applications.
But the system “completely exploded” under the pressure that year, De Somer said.
Early on, images of columns of migrants trekking across Europe and the body of three-year-old Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi washed up on a Greek beach sparked sympathy.
