Common European Asylum System created in 1999 has shown its inability to resist the arrival of millions of people at the European borders. It is not so much the scale of the phenomenon but the secondary movements within the EU territory that revealed the failure of this system. This failure could be foreseen before 2015 on the basis of significant imbalances between national asylum systems and the difficulty of member states to respond together to the challenging situation with refugees. In this respect, Franco-German cooperation has not played a role of a driving force for the European integration. Faced with the emergency, Germany and France have adopted a common position on the introduction of a temporary and exceptional system for distributing asylum applicants in Europe and on the creation of hotspots in places of migrants landing. However, France, less affected by the increase in the number of refugees, seems to be unwilling to support the revision of the European asylum system and leaves the leadership in these questions to Germany. The refugee crisis puts into question the idea of France as a land of asylum.

Franco-German cooperation Calais Refugees European Union

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