Tradable Refugee-Admission Quotas: A Policy Proposal to Reform the EU Asylum Policy

Abstract

The current EU Asylum policy is widely seen as ineffective and unfair. We propose an EU-wide market for tradable quotas on both refugees and asylum-seekers coupled with a matching mechanism linking countries' and migrants' preferences. We show that the proposed system can go a long way towards addressing the shortcomings of the existing system. We illustrate this claim using the recent problems regarding relocation faced by the European Relocation from Malta (EUREMA) program.

Keywords: Immigration policy, EU policy, tradable quotas, refugee resettlement, asylum seekers, international public goods.

JEL Classification: F22, F5, H87, I3, K33, 019