The Safe Third Country Concept
How and why states send asylum seekers to other countries for processing, and the legal and ethical controversies involved.
Outsourcing Asylum
The safe third country concept allows a state to refuse to examine an asylum claim if the applicant could have found protection in another country they traveled through. The logic is that refugees should seek protection in the first safe country they reach, rather than traveling onward to a preferred destination. If an Afghan refugee passes through Turkey and Greece before reaching Germany, the safe third country concept would allow Germany to return them to Greece (or Turkey) on the basis that they could have claimed asylum there.
The EU's Dublin Regulation is the most established application: it assigns responsibility for processing an asylum claim to the first EU country the applicant entered. In practice, this placed enormous pressure on frontline states like Greece, Italy, and Spain while allowing northern European states to avoid responsibility. The system was overwhelmed during the 2015 crisis and remains deeply dysfunctional, as the EU's 2024 Pact on Migration and Asylum attempted to address.
