THE EU’S MORAL RESPONSIBILITIES TOWARDS REFUGEES A Normative Reconstruction of the EU’s Normative Self-Understanding

Abstract

For Europeans, borders are usually not consciously present. With the increase of refugees at the European borders, they became clearly visible. Since February 2020 refugees at the Greek borders have been refused to cross the borders to enter Europe. These refugees tried to ask the European Union (EU) to protect their human rights. They appealed to a universal claim to human rights, since the political community they belong to can no longer guarantee their protection. In its normative self-understanding the EU committed itself to human rights. The Charter of Fundamental Right of the European Union says that the human dignity of all human beings should be protected, irrespective of nationality. The fact that refugees have been refused to enter Europe and by that are prevented from claiming their human rights to safety and asylum is a normative problem. A cosmopolitan interpretation by Seyla Benhabib of the EU’s core values shows that a moral commitment to moral rights should imply the possibility to claim these rights in a political community. If the EU committed itself to these human rights, they should enable refugees to actively claim these rights. Refusing refugees at the Greek border is against the EU’s own commitment to human rights. A political commitment to human rights is required from the EU’s commitments in the normative self-understanding as well as from a cosmopolitan perspective as described by Benhabib.