The Refugees' Integration between European Guarantees and Domestic Policies

At the beginning, EU institutions treated the asylum right as a state's right.
They mainly focused on the way to avoid conflicts among Member States applying a unique procedure in the asylum application.
Hence, in 1990 during the Dublin Convention, it has been set the standard in appointment only one Member State responsible for examining an application for asylum lodged in the territory of the EU.
The legal framework after the granting of refugee status on the contrary was not subject of binding harmonization.
The refugee legal status was considered as an activity which was voluntary commitment on the part of Member States.
This because only a Member State could "formally" give to a person the refugee status and consequently, once he/she was legally established in a Member State, the status would have been in accordance with the national provisions and law.
In that period, the role of the EU institutions was limited and at the same time, Member States retained a large degree of sovereignty over the modality of refugees' treatment.
It was therefore observed a remarkable national difference among Member States concerning refugees' conditions of establishment and residence.
Refugees' rights were not translated into the EU law so that their status derived merely from the EU legislation on general immigrant integration.
Sometimes, considering the particular situation of refugees, the EU asylum policy tried to create a set of concessions for refugees regarding their conditions relating to housing, sickness insurance, stable resources and compliance with the integration measures.
However, the only general provision was established a few years later with the so-called 1999 Tampere program.
It represented the milestone of the "asylum communitarization" process, made of deadlines and priorities for the fully application of the Amsterdam Treaty.
In the Tampere European Council's conclusions, Member States committed themselves in the establishing [of] a Common European Asylum System, based on the full and inclusive application on the Geneva Convention and so that, in the longer term, Community rules should lead to […] a uniform status for those who are granted asylum valid throughout the Union.
After this declaration, refugees were considered as persons legally established into the territory of the EU, submitted to the EU law and therefore beneficiaries of a legal EU status, with which it was possible to claim their rights.
Regrettably, we shall wait some years for observing a first timid step towards the evolution of the EU asylum policy dealing with the legal status of recognized refugees.