The policy area of freedom, security and justice represents one in which the European member states have been keen on remaining sovereign. In dealing with large inflows of asylum seekers, EASO was set up as an agency. The aim of this study was to assess what this new agency was an expression of, in terms of its role in relation to the member states. By applying the theory liberal intergovernmentalism, this created a useful tool for a comprehensive understanding of why states choose to cooperate within a more institutionalized form.       Methodologically, this study has looked closer at the founding documents of EASO, TFEU, the Lisbon treaty as well as literature on the theoretical framework. This paper has a descriptive ambition, in its aim to explain member states’ behaviour using an established theory.          This paper concludes that the theory contributes to an understanding of why EASO was created, having looked at national preferences, interstate bargaining and institutional choice. It is process in which national preferences are formulated, leading to relative bargaining positions and finally results in an institutional form that takes into account the self-rule of member states, while at the same time comprises a necessary operational mandate for EASO.

The Swedish authority “Migrationsverket” is a part of the common EU policy pursued in Europe. For the co-operation to function, there are a number of documents, directives and regulations that will help the states in Europe in the same direction. EASO (European Asylum Support Office) guidelines emerged in 2016, to lead the states in Europe towards a more humanitarian refugee policy, after the Recipients´directive left too much for interpretation. The study examines the implementation process from Europe to Sweden, on to the relevant authorities. The design of the survey is based on two questions and the method is a text analysis and qualitative interviews. The results show that the implementation process follows the study´s theory, Multi-level governance. To further analyze, Hills (1997) ten criterias for Top-down/Bottom-up being used. The result of the analysis turned out that six out of ten criterias were met. The result of the survey shows that there is a problem in the implementation process, where the different authorities are pointing fingers on each other.

It is common by states to deny asylum for asylum-seekers with the argument that the applicant could find protection within their own country of residence instead of receiving international protection. This is called internal protection alternative (IPA). This research is a comparative case study and aims to explore and compare two neighbouring countries, Sweden and Norway, on how their immigration authorities differ in their assessment on both the security situation and IPA in Afghanistan. Furthermore, this thesis aims to compare the Swedish and Norwegian immigration authorities with international laws, agreements and guidelines which, therefore, is the conceptional framework for this research. This study concludes that IPA is not mentioned in the 1951 Refugee Convention and that there are no clear directives on how to apply it. States tend to interpret the already existing laws and guidelines in their own way. The result of this is that there are differences between states practice and the consequence could be that asylum-seekers could receive different assessments and decisions from different countries. This research is, therefore, highly relevant from a humanitarian- and academia perspective as it highlights differences in national practice which is crucial since these differences will affect the refugee situation of individuals and the possibility of obtaining asylum.