De harmonisatie van het asielbeleid in de EU
Asylum and immigration are politically sensitive areas, involving many interests. Both topics regularly receive attention in the media; the asylum issue in particular is a hot topic. In this thesis, a literature review was conducted of policies developed within the European Union (EU) in the area of asylum and immigration, in the period 1980-2021. European integration in this area has now developed into a European asylum system, with an increasing number of European rules that in theory apply to all member states of the Union. The way in which policies and regulations adopted at the European level have been transposed and implemented in national policies differs in practice from one member state to another. Therefore, this dissertation also analysed the national asylum and immigration policies of two (former) EU member states in order to draw conclusions about how these two member states dealt with the policies developed at the European level.
The study used two theories used within the doctrine of International Relations. It was concluded that while many European policies have been developed, there is not yet an actual common asylum policy, where, for example, the asylum procedure and reception conditions are completely the same in each member state. It was also concluded that the Netherlands has conformed more to European regulations (and was more likely to agree with them) than the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom has been reluctant to engage with the EU from the beginning, the Brexit is no surprise in that sense.