Tribune. A lot of ink has been spilled over Brexit since the fateful date of June 23, 2016, the day of the referendum on the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union (EU). The economic, political, social, environmental, security and human impact of this decision has been analyzed at length by commentators from all sides for more than four years.
You could almost think that, finally, everything has been said … And yet, the blind spots of this unprecedented divorce are still numerous. Among them, the fate of migrant or refugee children traveling alone, leaving for the United Kingdom or already arrived on British soil, and for whom the procedures for family reunification, already complex, are likely to become more difficult.
More limited English law
After months of bitter negotiations between Europe and the United Kingdom, a compromise on Brexit was reached at the end of 2020. While many stumbling blocks have been resolved, the thorny migration issue, and in particular the question of asylum, was ignored. Yet it is on the subject of immigration that the pro-Brexit camp campaigned for the exit from the Union.
Nigel Farage, the former leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), is remembered brandishing the image of migrants on their way to Croatia’s borders and warning voters against “This migratory invasion”, which risked sweeping over Great Britain. Four years later, not a word on the United Kingdom’s forthcoming migration policy towards exiles in Europe who, in accordance with the rules on family reunification contained in the Dublin regulation, are waiting to cross the Channel.
Since 1er January, the United Kingdom has definitively left the European legislative framework and is no longer bound to comply with the treaties and other related rules. In matters of asylum and migration rights, English law now prevails on British soil and the latter is much more limited than in other countries of the European Union. As a reminder, in 2019, in the United Kingdom, 48% of asylum seekers were returned to their country and 98% of those forced to return were placed in detention centers, according to the Oxford Migration Observatory. .
The Dublin III Regulation (2013) delegates the responsibility for examining a refugee’s asylum application to the first host country (often Greece and Italy). However, this text provides certain exemptions for adults and unaccompanied minors (unaccompanied minors), who are authorized to enter a territory other than the host country to join a close relative (parent, brother, sister, grandparent, uncle or aunt).
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