Impact of the 2015 Migration Crisis on the Transit States' Refugee and Asylum Policy in the EU

In 2015 both the European Union (EU) experienced a huge external migration shock, which had a significant impact on the EU’s status-quo – the mass influx of refugees has challenged internal stability and security of the EU member states (MSs). As a result, rapidly growing popular support for anti-immigrant political parties can be witnessed almost in all states of the EU, as well as in the states of the Schengen Agreement. Certainly, the mass ‘revival’ of radical anti-immigrant parties has somehow affected the implementation of refugee and asylum policy at the national levels – in some European states the shift to stricter refugee and asylum policy can be seen even with the unaided eye, e.g. the Visegrád states’ national border closures, Hungary’s and Poland’s failure to implement the 2015 Relocation Decision, etc. But in the other European states, refugee and asylum policy has remained unchanged even in the post-2015 period. In the present research, we are going to address the question why some EU’s plus Schengen MSs tighten their refugee and asylum policy, while the other MSs do not, what particular factors impact this shift. And particular attention will be attached to the transit immigration states in Europe, as far as these states are supposed to be overburdened due to, on the one hand, their peripheral location and, on the other hand, the asymmetrical European migration regime.