¹ Convention determining the state responsible for examining applications for asylum lodged in one of the member states of the European Communities – Dublin Convention, OJ C 254, 19.08.1997. By ‘asylum’ the paper means the protection granted under the 1951 Geneva Convention and the 1967 New York Protocol, despite the word referring to a broader and more complex concept. This is due to a need for synthesis and because the negotiations of the time and the Dublin Convention (article 1) defined ‘asylum’ in these terms.

² The Dublin Convention was turned into a European Community Regulation in 2003 (Reg. (EC) n.343/2003), the so-called Dublin II, reformed in 2013 in the so-called Dublin III (Reg. (EU) n.604/2013), in effect at the time of writing. On the criticism towards Dublin III see, among others, European Commission, ‘Country Responsible for Asylum Application (Dublin Regulation)’, available at https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/asylum/examination-of-applicants_en (last visited 2 May 2020).

³ See, among others, the works of (in alphabetical order) Christina Boswell, Matthew J. Gibney, Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, Atle Grahl-Madsen, Kay Hailbronner, Christian Joppke, Sandra Lavenex, Gil Loescher, Goran Melander.

⁴ See, among others, Comte, Emmanuel, The History of the European Migration Regime: Germany's Strategic Hegemony (New York: Routledge, 2018)Google Scholar and Paoli, Simone, Frontiera Sud: l'Italia e la nascita dell'Europa di Schengen (Milano: Mondadori, 2018)Google Scholar.

⁵ Gibney, Matthew J., The Ethics and Politics of Asylum: Liberal Democracy and the Response to Refugees (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 15–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ By ‘Schengen process’ the paper means the negotiations between France, West Germany, Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands that determined the signature of the 1985 Schengen Agreement on the gradual abolition of checks at their common borders and of the 1990 convention on the implementation of the 1985 Agreement.

⁷ See, among others, European Parliament News, ‘EU Asylum Rules: Reform of the Dublin System’, 24 July 2019, europarl.europa, available at: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/priorities/refugees/20180615STO05927/eu-asylum-rules-reform-of-the-dublin-system (accessed 2 May 2020).

⁸ Statistical data on migration and asylum in these years are approximate, given the scarce reliable sources and the different national statistical systems. Three major factors determined the increase of arrivals of asylum seekers by the mid-1980s: the growing instability of some developing countries torn by civil wars, economic crisis, natural disasters or a combination of the three; the technological advances in transport and communication; and the closure of foreign labour recruitment by most European countries, as a result of the economic crisis of the previous decade. For an historical review of this period see Loescher, Gil, ‘The European Community and Refugees’, International Affairs, 65 (1989), 617–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ This perception was strictly related to the appearance of mixed flows – migration flows where asylum seekers who fulfilled the Geneva requirements were mixed with economic migrants and people fleeing circumstances not included in the Geneva Convention (such as wars, famine or natural disasters) – and the growth of the ‘asylum shopping’ phenomenon – asylum seekers asking for protection in more than one state. On the two phenomena see Brochmann, Grete and Hammar, Thomas, eds., Mechanisms of Immigration Control: A Comparative Analysis of European Regulation Policies (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 1999), 12–15Google Scholar. Some scholars stress how the non-European origin of the new asylum seekers, who started to come from all over the world, contributed to a less favourable attitude towards them. Joly, Danièle and Cohen, Robin, eds., Reluctant Hosts: Europe and its Refugees (Aldershot: Avebury, 1989), 147Google Scholar.

¹⁰ For an overview of these policies see Martin, David A., ed., The New Asylum Seekers: Refugee Law in the 1980's: The Ninth Sokol Colloquium on International Law (Dordrecht: Boston Press, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. These restrictions in the asylum field were consistent with the closures introduced by the twelve concerning immigration in the previous decade. On the immigration restrictions of the 1970s, see among others Guiraudon, Virginie, Les politiques d'immigration en Europe: Allemagne, France, Pays-Bas (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2000)Google Scholar.

¹¹ For an interesting study and overview of the literature on the point see European Commission, Asylum Migration to the European Union: Patterns of Origin and Destination (Luxembourg: Official Publications of the European Communities, 1998) and Kritzman-Amir, Tally, ‘Not in My Backyard: On the Morality of Responsibility Sharing in Refugee Law’, Brooklyn Journal of International Law, 2 (2009), 355–94Google Scholar.

¹² On this concern and competition see, among others, Fullerton, Maryellen, ‘Restricting the Flow of Asylum-Seekers in Belgium, Denmark, the Federal Republic of Germany and the Netherlands: New Challenges to the Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the European Convention on Human Rights’, Virginia Journal of International Law, 33 (1989), 33–114Google Scholar.

¹³ The United Kingdom, Greece, Denmark and Ireland were the most restrictive on third-country nationals’ free movement rights. Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (thereafter AMAE), La Courneuve, 1914INVA5 Sauve (Ministère des Affaires Intérieurs (thereafter MAI), Direction Liberté Publiques et Affaires Juridiques) – Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Direction des Français à l'extérieurs et des Etrangères en France (thereafter MAE-DFEF), LIB/CAB II/BJ/N.12, 06.01.1989.

¹⁴ AMAE, 101SUP17 Trevi Group and Ad Hoc Group on Immigration, 14–15 Dec. 1989. On the relations between the two groups and the previous works of the Trevi Group see Lavenex, Sandra, The Europeanisation of Refugee Policies: Between Human Rights and Internal Security (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001)Google Scholar and Bigo, Didier, L'Europe de la sécurité intérieure (Paris: Institut des hautes études de la sécurité Intérieure, 1992)Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Callovi, Giuseppe, ‘Regulation of Immigration in 1993: Pieces of the European Community Jig-Saw Puzzle’, International Migration Review, 2 (1992), 353–72, 365Google Scholar. Among member states, West Germany, France, Italy and Spain had constitutional provisions which recognised the right of asylum.

¹⁶ National Archives (thereafter NA), Kew Garden, FCO 30/7564 Cabinet Office ‘Note’ 15.04.1988.

¹⁷ Historical Archives of the European Commission (thereafter HAEC), Brussels, BDT-315.2014 1044 70.253.032 Williamson (EC Commission, General Secretariat), SG (88) 3312, 25.03.1988. The principle of subsidiarity promoted by the commission was an initiative to come into play only if intergovernmental work did not make any satisfactory progress.

¹⁸ Hailbronner, Kay and Thiery, Claus, ‘Schengen II and Dublin: Responsibility for Asylum Applications in Europe’, Common Market Law Review, 34 (1997), 957–89, 962CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Asylum will be included in the Third Pillar by the Treaty on European Union, under article K1. OJ C 326, 26.10.2012.

¹⁹ The introduction of a more restrictive asylum law in 1986 determined a drastic reduction of asylum applications in Denmark. NA, FCO 30/9053 Hatful (Home Office, thereafter HO) – Spencer (Foreign and Commonwealth Office, thereafter FCO), 17 Dec. 1990. For a synthetic overview of this period see Loescher, Gil, Beyond Charity: International Cooperation and the Global Refugee Crisis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

²⁰ John Salt, Current Trends in International Migration in Europe, Council of Europe, CDMG (2001), 23 Nov. 2001.

²¹ Article 16 of the Basic Law stated: ‘persons persecuted on political grounds shall enjoy the right of asylum’, meaning asylum seekers had always to be granted access to the German territory. Friedrich Heckmann and Wolfgang Bosswick, eds., Migration Policies: A Comparative Perspective (Stuttgart: Enke, 1995), 324–7. The proximity of Eastern Europe implied arrivals from those territories but also from developing countries through the Schonfeld airport (East Berlin). NA, FCO 58/4488 FCO, Western European Department, ‘Home Secretary's Visit to Bonn’, 23 Sept. 1986.

²² Debates on the opportunity to reform the liberal asylum policy dated back to the 1950s but involved only experts at the time. Poutrus, Patrice G., ‘Asylum in Postwar Germany: Refugee Admission Policies and Their Practical Implementation in the Federal Republic and the GDR Between the Late 1940s and the Mid-1970s’, Journal of Contemporary History, 49 (2014), 115–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²³ Stokes, Lauren, ‘The Permanent Refugee Crisis in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1949–’, Central European History, 52 (2019), 19–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ Constitutional amendments required a qualified majority, but only the Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union were ready to do it; the Free Democratic Party and the Social Democratic Party were against it. For an overview of the West Germany asylum policy see Munch, U., Asylpolitik in der Bundesrepublic Deutschland. Entwicklung und Alternativen (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Bosswick, Wolfgang, ‘Development of Asylum Policy in Germany’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 43 (2000), 43–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁵ AMAE, 1851INVA34 Renouard (MAE-DFEF) Note 05 Nov. 1986. This primary role of West Germany is consistent with Emmanuel Comte's thesis that Bonn was the most relevant actor in the establishment of an European migration system; see Comte, Emmanuel, The History of the European Migration Regime: Germany's Strategic Hegemony (New York: Routledge, 2018)Google Scholar.

²⁶ NA, FCO 30/9904 Levi (British Embassy Bonn) – Arthur (FCO) 09 Aug. 1991. Germany eventually amended its constitution in 1993; the Dublin Convention, but also the massive arrivals of the early 1990s, played a role in this decision. Similar dynamics influenced the approval of stricter asylum laws by most member states in the early 1990s.

²⁷ Ferris, Elizabeth G., Refugees and World Politics (New York: Praeger, 1985), 111Google Scholar.

²⁸ AMAE, 3302TOPO2918 German Federal Ministry of the Interior ‘Concept regarding the refugee problem’, 25 Sept. 1990.

²⁹ As was the case for the Schengen Convention, whose broader approach exposed it more to the developments in Eastern Europe. AMAE, 101SUP104 Tel n.26492-94 Calimajou (MAE) – Administrative Distribution, 18 Dec. 1989.

³⁰ NA, FCO 58/4488 Stagg (FCO) – Barnett (FCO), 10 Nov. 1986. At the same time, the Council of Europe had already discussed the issue in 1988, under an Austrian request (once again, an Eastern European bordering country).

³¹ AMAE, 101SUP4 Renouard, Schengen II-7, 05 Oct. 1988.

³² Historical Archives of the Council of the European Union (thereafter HACEU), CM2 WGI 44 General Secretariat of the Council, SN 1830/87 WGI 89, 22.06.1987. The Dublin Convention adopted a restrictive concept of family unity. At the same time, cultural links were among the facultative clauses of the convention.

³³ NA, FCO 30/8222 Morris (HO) – Langdon (HO), 23.10.1989.

³⁴ HAEC, BDT/224/94 1180 Isoplan Etude Nov. 1989. For an historical overview of the Mediterranean asylum and migration policy see Russell King and Richard Black, Southern Europe and the New Immigrations (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1997).

³⁵ NA, FCO 30/9904 Waterworth (British Embassy Bonn) – Wilkinson (Private Secretary, Home Office), 20 Aug. 1991. For an historical overview of the Italian migration and asylum policies see Einaudi, Luca, Le politiche dell'immigrazione in Italia dall'unità a oggi (Rome: Laterza, 2007)Google Scholar and Michele Colucci, Storia dell'immigrazione straniera in Italia : dal 1945 ai nostri giorni (Rome: Carocci, 2018).

³⁶ The Martelli Law (39/1990) determined Italy's adhesion to the 1967 protocol. On the internal and external dynamics that led to the adoption of the Martelli Law see Finotelli, Claudia and Sciortino, Giuseppe, ‘The Importance of Being Southern: The Making of Policies of Immigration Control in Italy’, European Journal of Migration and Law, 11 (2009), 119–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁷ AMAE, 101SUP13 Tel.646 Perol (French Embassy Rome) – MAE 12.06.1990.

³⁸ The reasoning developed in this and the following section works for (non-authorised) land transit. Air transit was disciplined by separate clauses of the convention (articles 7.2 and 7.3). On the ‘transit’ concept in asylum policy see Fitzgerald, David Scott, Refuge Beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum Seekers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁹ Article 30e of the Convention Implementing the Schengen Agreement. The analysis of the relation between the Schengen and the Dublin Convention is beyond the scope of this article. It is enough to state that the five of the Schengen Group came to an agreement before the twelve and sent the same negotiators of the two groups to the table, which promoted the same core ideas. France and West Germany were particularly aligned in both fora. AMAE 101SUP8 Renouard, Note n.8329, 18 Apr., 1989.

⁴⁰ Article 31.1 of the Geneva Convention states: ‘Contracting states shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of Article 1, enter or are present in their territory without authorization’. There was a debate on the interpretation of the word ‘directly’. On the point see Hurwitz, Agnes, The Collective Responsibility of States to Protect Refugees (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 129–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴¹ The twelve indirectly recognised asylum seekers’ right to choose their country of asylum in case of no visa requirements and of airport or port transit (article 7), taking the 1960s Benelux integration agreements as an example. It is interesting to stress that the Schengen Group did not provide free choice in these cases, where the first entry rule worked.

⁴² UNHCR Executive Committee, Conclusion n.15 (1979), available at https://www.unhcr.org/excom/exconc/3ae68c960/refugees-asylum-country.html and AMAE, 1930INVA5068 Council of Europe, Parliamentary Assembly, Commission on migrations, refugees and demography AS/PR (34) 15, 13 Aug. 1982.

⁴³ See, e.g., Historical Archives of the European Union (thereafter HAEU), Fiesole, PE1-18213, B1-112/84 (Lizin, Socialist Group) adopted on 15 Apr. 1984 on gender persecution or PE2-13311, B2-512/87 (Socialist Group) adopted on 18 June 1987 on national asylum policies.

⁴⁴ European Parliament, Res A2-227/86, OJ C 099, 13 Apr. 1987. For the European Commission, see below. Other contexts dealt with the matter at the time, such as the European consultations on the arrivals of asylum seekers and refugees in Europe, but they remained on a general level and are therefore excluded from the analysis.

⁴⁵ Antonio Fortin, UNHCR Senior Legal Officer in London, quoted in US Committee for Refugees, At Fortress Europe's Moat: The Safe Third Country Concept, July 1997, 9.

⁴⁶ This position reflected the concerns of the High Commissioner Van Heuven Goedhart. Goodwin-Gill, Guy S., The Refugee in International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 88Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ UNHCR Executive Committee, Conclusion n.15 (1979).

⁴⁸ UNHCR Executive Committee, Conclusion n.58 (1989), available at https://www.unhcr.org/excom/exconc/3ae68c4380/problem-refugees-asylum-seekers-move-irregular-manner-country-already-found.html (last visited 2 May 2020). The non-refoulement principle prohibits states from sending a person to a place where s/he is at risk of irreparable harm upon return, including persecution, torture, ill treatment or other serious human rights violations. The idea of ‘protection’ was related strictly to the debate on the meaning of ‘safe’ third country. The analysis of these discussions is beyond the scope of this article; for a review of the literature on this point see Coleman, Nils, European Readmission Policy: Third Country Interests and Refugee Rights (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2009), 223–317CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Lavenex, Sandra, Safe Third Countries (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Zoom interview with Professor Christopher Hein (Professor in Refugee Law at LUISS University, former UNHCR official and former president of Consiglio Italiano per i Rifugiati), 25 May 2020.

⁵⁰ Revisiting the Dublin Convention: some reflections by UNHCR in response to the commission staff working paper SEC (2000), 522.

⁵¹ By Europe, the paper refers here to the twelve, whose governments had frequent tensions with the high commissioner because of critical stands of the organisation (see West Germany around 1983) and lack of funding. On the relation between UNHCR and European governments see Loescher, Gil, The UNHCR and World Politics: A Perilous Path (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵² The length and the nature of the stay were a matter of discussion. The issue of the nature of the stay was resolved thanks to the secretariat of the council, who suggested the formula ‘with the consent of the authorities’, where the consent did not need to be formally expressed, recalling the provisions of the agreement on transfer of responsibility for refugees. AMAE, 1851INVA2 Council of Europe, CAHAR (83) 20 def., 12 July 1983.

⁵³ Council of Europe, CAHAR (84) 4 final, 22 May 1984, available at https://rm.coe.int/0900001680911b5e (last visited 2 May 2020).

⁵⁴ AMAE, 3302TOPO2918 Council of Europe, CAHAR (87) 1, 03 Feb. 1987.

⁵⁵ The UNHCR participated as an observer to the CAHAR. The Italian, Turkish and Spanish delegations tried to again put the issue of the ‘link’ between asylum seekers and host countries on the table but at a late stage of the discussions, and they did not fight for it. Council of Europe, CAHAR (88) 3, 18 Apr. 1988, available at https://rm.coe.int/09000016809125e4 (last visited 2 May 2020).

⁵⁶ Council of Europe, Conclusions of the 427th Meeting of the Ministers’ Deputies, 12–15 June and 19 June 1989, available at https://rm.coe.int/090000168091d694. Although the convention was never signed, part of the unadopted agreement was included in Parliamentary Assembly, Recommendation 1236 (1994), available at http://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/XRef/Xref-XML2HTML-en.asp?fileid=15270&lang=en (last visited 2 May 2020).

⁵⁷ Visa and permits of stay were considered an indirect expression of the asylum seeker's intention. HAEC, BDT-315.2014 1044 70.253.032 Braun and Perissich (EC Commission, DG III Internal Market), Note III/D/1, 28 Jan. 1988.

⁵⁸ Gaia Lott, ‘Between Restrictiveness and Humanitarianism: EC Institutions and the Asylum Policies of the 1980s’, in Sara Lorenzini, Umberto Tulli and Ilaria Zamburlini, eds., The Human Rights Breakthrough of the 1970s (London: Bloomsbury, 2021).

⁵⁹ Belgium and West Germany required a three month stay; the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and Italy considered transit (broadly interpreted) not enough. FCO 30/8227 Ad Hoc Group on Immigration (thereafter Ad Hoc Group), SN 2499/89 WGI 444, 04.09.1989. These time requirements were consistent with the UNHCR principle of ‘previous protection’.

⁶⁰ The 1986 ‘Danish clause’ derived from the Scandinavian practice; ‘Société française pour le droit international’, 30th Colloque de Caen: droit d'asile et des réfugiés (Paris: Pedone, 1997), 200.

⁶¹ AMAE, 1914INVA5 Sauve – MAE-DFEF, LIB/ECT/MIS/N.108 FD-DS/MB, 27.04.1989. Moreover, as the French recognised, the procedure was rarely applied.

⁶² Proposals ranged from three months to two weeks to three days in the transit country. HACEU, CM2 WGI 45 Ad Hoc Group, SN 1223/88 WGI 257, 14.04.1988.

⁶³ HACEU, SCH/II 58 Schengen Agreement, Group II, SCH/II (88) 9, 02.03.1988. The French expressed this position in the Schengen Group, but it worked for the twelve's discussions as well.

⁶⁴ HACEU, CM2 WGI 45 Ad Hoc Group, SN/63/88 WGI 221, 15 Feb. 1988.

⁶⁵ AMAE, 101SUP1 MAE, Coordination Mission for the Free Circulation of Persons Note, 18 Apr. 1989.

⁶⁶ NA, FCO 30/8228 Arthur Hodge (British Embassy Copenhagen), 13 Oct. 1989.

⁶⁷ HAEC, BAC 41/1989 N.1046 Wenceslas de Lobkowicz (EC Commission, DG III Internal Market) ‘CAHAR 21–5 Sept. 1987’, 23 Oct. 1987.

⁶⁸ During the negotiations Denmark, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom suggested unsuccessfully to rely on ‘reasonable presumption’ rather than ‘proof’ of irregular entry. HACEU, CM2 WGI 77.3 Ad Hoc Group, SN 3144/89 WGI 483, 18 Oct. 1989.

⁶⁹ On this point see Paoli, Simone, Frontiera Sud: l'Italia e la nascita dell'Europa di Schengen (Milano: Mondadori, 2018)Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ Germany would put the ‘burden sharing’ issue on the negotiation table of the twelve some years later (1994) with no success; see Draft Council Resolution on Burden-sharing with Regard to the Admission and Residence of Refugees, July 1994, Doc. No. 7773/94 ASIM 124.

⁷¹ Commission of the European Communities, Staff Working Paper ‘Revisiting the Dublin Convention’ SEC (2000) 522.

⁷² NA, FCO 30/9903 Lord Waddington (Home Secretary) ‘Asylum and Immigration Appeal’, 12 July 1991.

⁷³ Daphne Bouteillet-Paquet, ‘Passing the Buck: A Critical Analysis of the Readmission Policy Implemented by the European Union and Its Member States’, European Journal of Migration and Law, 3 (2003), 359–78, 362. By ‘irregular immigrant’ the paper refers to the definition given by the European Commission: ‘people who move to a new place of residence or transit outside the regulatory norms of the sending, transit and receiving countries’, European Commission, European Migration Network Glossary, available at https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/networks/european_migration_network/glossary_search/irregular-migration_en (accessed 2 May 2020).

⁷⁴ NA, FCO 30/7564 Ad Hoc Group, SN 3712/1/87 WGI 203, 07 Jan. 1988.

⁷⁵ See, among others, AMAE, 101SUP8 MAI, Minister Cabinet, International Affairs Advisor, CAB/FN/NL/N.830, 18 Apr. 1989.

⁷⁶ See, among others, NA, HO 394/991 ‘Dublin and Schengen Convention: UNHCR's Position’, WGI 853, undated but filed in a 1991 folder.

⁷⁷ UNHCR, ‘Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status under the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees’, HCR/IP/4/Eng/REV.1 Re-edited, Geneva, Jan. 1992, UNHCR 1979. On paper the Dublin Convention protected asylum seekers from the risk of direct and indirect refoulement, because member states were considered safe countries of origin and safe third countries. However, this idea will be problematised by national courts in the early 1990s, especially with regard to indirect refoulement. Hailbronner, Kay, ‘Asylum Law Reform in the German Constitution’, American University Journal of International Law and Policy, 4 (1994), 159–80Google Scholar.

⁷⁸ To deepen the broader historical discussion on the link between the right of asylum and human rights, see Colloquy on European Law, The Law of Asylum and Refugees. Present Tendencies and Future Perspectives: Proceedings of the Sixteenth Colloquy on European Law (Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 1987).

⁷⁹ AMAE, 3302TOPO2918 French Mission in Geneva – MAE-DFEF n.648/FAE 20.05.1987. For a synthetic overview of a different approach to asylum policies see Hathaway, James C., ‘Reconceiving Refugee Law as Human Rights Protection’, Journal of Refugee Studies 4, 2 (1991), 113–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸⁰ Zoom interview with Professor David Martin (International Law Professor at the University of Virginia), 15 May 2020.

⁸¹ Joppke, Christian, ed., Challenge to the Nation-State: Immigration in Western Europe and the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 155CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On certain topics (e.g. rights of asylum seekers) a distinct approach was perceivable between the representatives of Foreign Affairs and of the Interior and Justice departments. However, regarding criteria determining responsibility for asylum applications, archival research shows that the approach of the two ministries was not so different.

⁸² AMAE, 101SUP2 Coordinator Group Free Movement of Persons, CIRC 3651/1/89 REV 1, 20 Nov. 1989. The works of the Ad Hoc Group had been criticised by NGOs and the European Parliament since the beginning, because of their secret character that excluded democratic accountability. See, e.g., HAEU, PE3-24386 joint resolution replacing the previous motions by the single parliamentary groups (B3-1208; B3-1209; B3-1227; B3-1232; B3-1248), 14 June 1990.

⁸³ Noll, Gregor, ‘Prisoners’ Dilemma in Fortress Europe: On the Prospects for Equitable Burden-Sharing in the European Union’, German Yearbook of International Law, 40 (1997), 405–37, 434Google Scholar.

⁸⁴ Between 1990 and 2000, 124 readmission agreements were signed (there were twelve between 1950 and 1970 and two between 1980 and 1990). Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands were the most active in these years. Federal Migration Service of Russia and IOM, Manual on Readmission for Experts and Practitioners (2010), available at https://publications.iom.int/books/manual-readmission-experts-and-practitioners-0 (last visited 3 Feb. 2020).

⁸⁵ NA, HO 394/991 Ad Hoc Group, SN 2881/91 WGI 837 and WGI 842, 24 July 1991. The 1991 Schengen–Poland agreement and the 1994 EU specimen readmission agreement did the same.

⁸⁶ NA, FCO 30/9904 Stephenson (FCO) – Montgomery (FCO), 16 Sept. 1991 and UNHCR, UNHCR Position on Readmission Agreements, Protection Elsewhere and Asylum Policy, 1994, available at http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b31cb8.html (last visited 3 Feb. 2020). Referring to the 1990s readmission agreements, some authors speak of ‘neo-refoulement practice’. Jennifer Hyndman and Alison Mountz, ‘Another Brick in the Wall? Neo-Refoulement and the Externalization of Asylum by Australia and Europe’, Government and Opposition, 43 (2008), 249–69.

⁸⁷ NA, FCO 30/9053 Morris – Dent (HO), 21 May 1990.