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International attention on the plight of Syrian refugees seeking asylum in Europe has brought into question the long term efficacy of the European Union. Patchwork policy requirements set down by the European Council have disproportionately spread the economic and political strain of historically high levels of incoming asylum-seekers to member states at the external border of the Union. Italy and Greece specifically have been handed the administrative responsibility of the current inflows of people despite both nations having fundamentally fragile economies, recent histories of anti-immigration policy, and a complete inability to adequately combat the humanitarian aspects of this crisis. The severity of the situation has garnered calls to end the Schengen area and other nationalist policies, but in order to properly embrace its role as a beacon of opportunity for those seeking to escape persecution, the EU must coordinate to create a more comprehensive and fair institution to combat smuggling and encourage legal channels for asylum-seekers.

This thesis is focused on different government approaches to taxi market. It discusses necessity of regulations in this branch. The core part of this thesis is empirical analysis of taxi markets in London, Dublin, Paris, Stockholm, New York and Prague. To study the subject more complex I also examined PHV (private hire vehicle) market which provides almost the same kind of services but it is not regulated. These markets are compared in term of supply -- number of cars per capita and price, and also in term of demand -- utilization of cars and customers content. According to this comparison I tried to find out if any of these approches can be considered as optimal, and wheather if regulated or deregulated markets bring better results. This thesis also discusses the best way how to deregulate entry into the taxi market. This will be illustrated by case study of entry deregulation in Dublin. I also provide some recommendation for taxi market in Prague.

The Dublin Regulation determines the Member State responsible for accepting and making a decision on asylum claims lodged in the European Union (‘EU’), Norway and Iceland. It aims to ensure that each asylum claim is examined by one and only one Member State, to put an end to the practice of ‘asylum shopping’ and to prevent repeated applications, both of which have been costly for the receiving Member States and caused severe inefficiencies in the determination processes in the EU in the past. With the first Member State of entry being the major determinant for the allocation of asylum responsibility under the Dublin Regulation, there has been growing discontent among Member States at the external borders of the EU, particularly the southern Member States in the Mediterranean, over what they see as a system that has unjustly placed disproportionate burdens on them regarding the admission of seaborne asylum seekers and the costs associated with it. As a result of changes in migration rules and consequent adjustments in the entry strategy employed by irregular migrants and people smugglers, the Member States at the EU’s ‘southern frontline’ have unwillingly played the role of reluctant hosts to boatloads of unwelcome asylum seekers. This thesis aims to examine how the EU has attempted to tackle the challenging situation of the unauthorised migration of asylum seekers into its territory by sea, and in particular, how it has responded to demands from affected Member States for a more equitable system of asylum responsibility allocation in spite of and outside the Dublin framework. It would argue that the ‘small’ EU Member States in the Mediterranean themselves have, over the last five years at least, become the unexpected drivers of the EU’s declared commitment to the principles of ‘solidarity’, ‘fair sharing of responsibility’ and ‘effective multilateralism’. ‘ Small’ as they may be in terms of resources, size or influence vis-à-vis the larger Member States, the former have been able to create their own mark in a global regime that has traditionally been resistant to the idea of burden-sharing. The measures taken by the EU’s ‘southern frontline’ have collectively changed the landscape of a global protection regime where not only is asylum ‘burden sharing’ highly elusive – its terms and conditions are also dictated by the more powerful sovereign states. While the theoretical point of departure in this study is the influence wielded by the ‘small’ EU Member States in the burden-sharing debate, the degree or level of ‘influence’ small Mediterranean Member States can exercise in pushing for cooperative arrangements is itself determined by a system that is biased towards large states, increasingly securitised, and is therefore limited in both nature and scope. Nevertheless, the experience of ‘burden-sharing’ in the EU between 2005 and 2010 demonstrates that the Member States at the periphery have proactively taken the responsibility for the operationalisation of the founding values and principles of the EU, and through active norm advocacy and related strategies, have been able to achieve what has eluded the global protection regime so far – a refugee burden sharing scheme.

The 2015 refugee crisis clearly highlighted that the European asylum system is flawed and triggered a heated discussion on the functioning and appropriateness of the Dublin Regulation. The present research tries to account for differences in the implementation of the Dublin regime from its coming into force in 1997 until today, by testing the three possibly influencing factors 'misfit', administrative capacity and overall situation for Germany, Hungary and Italy. The comparative case study first ascertains that Germany implements the obligations to a medium to high degree, while Hungary presents a low and Italy a medium-low implementation record. The analysis of the single variables shows that the higher the compatibility between the national and the European asylum system at the moment of adhering to the Dublin system, the more diligently a country implements it. While no clear claims can be made if and how the administrative capacity of a state affects implementation, the economic situation does have an impact in the sense that a stronger overall state of the economy appears to have positive effects on implementation. The research is part of the general research framework of Europeanization and contributes to the scholarship on implementation. By shedding light on the factors leading to...

This essay studies the European Union and the European asylum system from Max Webers authority theory. The EU considers to be an area of freedom and human rights, but recent events have shown inadequacies in the asylum system that was established by the Dublin Regulation 2003. The Hungarian government is one of the member countries of the EU that has refused and declined their obligations towards the EU. The aim of this study is to see why the EU have failed in implementing a functioning asylum policy and how the lack of authority have resulted in an insufficient asylum system for an international organization. The conclusion in this essay is that the Union is allowing member countries to not be cooperating with the European laws and the absence of authority and efficiency has led to some of the member countries to take advantage of it.

This study examines the asylum process in Europe from the perspective of unaccompanied refugee children affected by the Dublin Regulation. The aim is to explore whether these children get access to a legally certain asylum process in the Common European Asylum System by comparing the experiences of the children with legal documents, directives and guidelines on how the procedure should be implemented. The study has been conducted as a multiple case study where information has been collected from previous research, published stories and reports, news articles, legal documents and an interview with a representative from a local network supporting asylum seekers living in clandestinity. The study uses the theory of Hannah Arendt regarding the right to have rights, examining whether the children’s experiences of the asylum process in Europe compared to legal documents show signs of them being excluded from a legally certain process and what that may mean for their human rights to be implemented and protected. International human rights law states that children, and especially unaccompanied refugee children shall always receive special protection due to their vulnerable status and the European Union should guarantee a legally certain asylum procedure for all refugees in all member states. This study illuminates difficulties for unaccompanied refugee children affected by the Dublin Regulation to get access to a legally certain asylum process in Europe and in accordance with the theory of Arendt their functional statelessness tend to exclude them from getting human rights, advocated as universal, fulfilled.

The subject matter of my thesis is the Dublin system which includes the Council Regulation (EC) No 343/2003 of 18. February 2003 establishing the criteria and mechanisms for determining the Member State responsible for examining an asylum application lodged in one of the Member States by a third-country national and the Council Regulation (EC) No 2725/2000 of 11 December 2000 concerning the establishment of 'Eurodac' for the comparison of fingerprints for the effective application of the Dublin Convention. The aim of this thesis is to acquaint its readers, point out the shortcomings and benefits of the existing regulation and evaluate the application of both regulations. I was trying to explain the functioning of this system with the help of the cases of ECHR and CJEU. My thesis is divided into five chapters. In the first chapter, I focused on the development of a common European asylum system before the adoption of the Regulation and then also at the Regulation itself and the objectives it observes. The second chapter is devoted to the principles and criteria for determining the responsibility of the Member State to examine an asylum application. After I mentioned the general principles set out in the Regulation, I have dealt with the actual procedure of determining the Member State. There is also...

Focused on procedural safeguards for asylum seekers contained within Dublin Regulation III (Articles 4 and 5), this thesis has the aim of understanding why Italian administrations are still not compliant with these rights, which are nevertheless guaranteed in directly applicable and immediately enforceable EU legislation. This study turns its attention to the enforcement obstacles, and explores the factors that might impede compliance with the law, some of which appeared less self-evident than others. Before proceeding to a technical on-the-ground analysis of the problem informed by expert interviews, the previously assumed argument of 'overburdened peripheral state' is first taken off the debate, since, as the thesis explains, due to recent policies, Italy has not been burdened during the last two years and yet has still been demonstrating lack of compliance. The results point to two clear distinct factors: a poor administration lacking staff, training and autonomy, as well as a lack of control and sanction from EU and National entities, and lack of litigation from below. Further results hinting at the potential existence of political interference in administrations' non-application of these articles have also been highlighted but not confirmed as those are in need of more thorough research....

This thesis deals with the issue of solidarity and burden-sharing (responsibility-sharing respectively) in the EU Area of Freedom, Security and Justice. Its primary aim is to apply the theory of burden-sharing to the case of the EU asylum policy and in particular, to verify or falsify Olson's free-riding hypothesis on the exploitation of the great by the small (meaning of the rich by the poor). This hypothesis will be tested using a mixed research method which combines qualitative and quantitative elements. The qualitative part will focus on the analysis of the so-called Dublin Regulation (Dublin II and III) and its criteria and mechanisms of determining the responsible Member State for examining an asylum application. Applying Moravcsik's liberal intergovernmentalism, a special emphasis will be placed on the proces of negotiating the Regulation (Dublin II) in an attempt to identify and clarify dominant Member States' positions and their influence on the final wording. Consequently, the level of burden- sharing will be illustrated on the example of interstate transfers of asylum seekers (so-called physical burden-sharing). This type of burden-sharing will be also demonstrated qualitatively by means of statistical data available for the period of 2008-2013 which will be interpreted in relation to...