EU Asylum Distribution Key

You can access the interactive visualisation here.

Acronyms: AA = Asylum Applications, DK = Distribution Key/Quota

About This Visualisation

In September 2015 the European Commission proposed a plan to relocate 120,000 refugees from Greece, Italy & Hungary to all European countries. This was supposed to be done by a mandatory distribution key using objective and quantifiable criteria, consisting of:

• Population (40%, positive weight)
• GDP (40%, positive weight)
• Average number of past asylum applications (10%, negative weight)
• Unemployment rate (10%, negative weight)

The formula has since been corrected by the Swiss scientist Philip Grech, as it had some mathematical flaws. With this visualisation you can see the results of applying this quota to different time periods and compare it to reality.

Motivation

1. Provide an easily accessible overview of the distribution of (accepted) AA in the EU.
2. Provide a sensible and changeable benchmark of how many refugees each country should accept.

In short: we wanted to put the omnipresent discussion of certain European countries taking too few or too many refugees on a more factual basis.

What this is not about

• Politics: The political intricacies are interesting but not the focus here. Start with the original press release.
• Creating a better formula: Several alternative distribution keys have been proposed. See Other sources below.

How to Use

• First slider: Determines how many refugees to distribute and the data basis year for the DK.
• Variable choice: Show EU-wide ratio, total numbers, or numbers per 1,000 inhabitants.
• Weight sliders: Adjust the four DK weights (default: 0.4/0.4/0.1/0.1 as proposed by the EU).

Data Sources

All data was accessed between 11–14 June 2016 and again on 10 October 2016.

Eurostat

• Annual GDP in current prices (nama_10_gdp)
• Population on 1 January (demo_pjan)
• Annual average unemployment rate (une_rt_a)
• Asylum applications — monthly data 1999–2016 (migr_asyappctzm, migr_asyctzm, migr_asyctz)
• Accepted asylum applications — quarterly (migr_asydcfstq)

UNHCR

Monthly asylum-seeker data from 1999 to April 2016 from the UNHCR Population Statistics database.

Other Sources

• EU press release on the distribution key
• Original EU formula
• Philip Grech’s journal article
• NY Times article with visualisations (Sept 2015)
• The Konigstein Key by Daniel Thym
• Alternative DK by Luc Bovens & Anna Bartsch

Thanks to Philip Grech for the constructive correspondence on this topic.