Abstract

What are the responsibilities of the EU in the context of asylum? This paper distinguishes between two possible different answers to this question. A first answer understands the responsibilities of the EU as the shared responsibilities that member states have towards refugees and vis-á-vis each other by virtue of their membership in the EU. This is also the prevalent answer in the current literature on the EU and refugees. We develop a second and novel answer by putting forward an account of the EU as a group agent to which responsibility can be attributed over and above the responsibility that attaches to its member states. On the corporate responsibility account, the three grounds commonly used to justify the responsibilities that states have towards refugees (humanity, legitimacy, contribution to harm) can also ground the protective responsibility of the EU towards refugees.