Grant-funded Project Nr. 483/2004/A-HN/FSV Final Report
Project title:
Asylum Policy of The Visegrad Countries
Research leader:
Bc. Jana Hecová, 1999
Co-researcher:
Doc. PhDr. Jiří Vykoukal, CSc.
Period of project:
2004-2004
Overall grant:
95 000 CZK
Project Results
Master Thesis This thesis describes the construction of the asylum policies applied in Central Europe after the revolutionary changes of 1989. During the times of communism problems with refugees existed only to a minor degree (concerning few refugees from Chile and Greece). There was no systematic asylum policy to be possibly continued in the nineties. During this period, Central Europe was actually the origin of political emigration. In the nineties, the Visegrád countries had to seriously tackle the problems with refugees arising from the conflicts in former Yugoslavia and the unstable situation in Central Europe. Although the majority of the refugees did not view those Central European countries as their final destinations, they lay along the way to Western Europe where most of the people seeking political asylum actually wanted to go. The paper describes the national structure of the refugee and asylum seeker movement as well as the development of institutions and national legislations of the individual Visegrád countries. At the same time, it shows connections to the development within the European Union and the European integration process. At meetings in Maastricht, Amsterdam, and Tampere, the foundations for a common asylum policy in the EU were laid. The Visegrád states were trying hard to become members of the European Union, which included accepting the entire European law on political asylum as part of the acquis communautaire. Their adjacent EU-neighbours, Germany and Austria, were due to the strong migration pressure on them interested in functioning border controls. Therefore, they significantly influenced the characteristics of the Visegrád countries’ asylum policies. Both countries also welcomed the opportunity to pass the responsibility for asylum seekers to the Visegrád countries. The following conflict accompanied the construction of a new asylum policy in the Visegrád states: on the one hand, these countries committed themselves to the international refugee law at the beginning of the nineties. On the other hand however, they had to fulfil strict EU requirements concerning border controls and restrictive asylum measurements (withdrawal of asylum seekers from the EU, obligatory visa, etc.). Afraid that they could become a “collecting tank” for refugees from all over Europe, the Visegrád countries accepted the European model of “safe third countries” and “safe countries of origin”.