The year 2015 was a serious stress test for the stability and cohesion of the European Union. The so-called refugee crisis has induced not only emotions, positive and negative, but continuous shifts both in public opinion and government actions. The crisis has also revealed several divisions within the European Union among its member states, and also disclosed certain limitations of the European project.

The Joint Policy Study analyses the selected cases of some “destination countries” (Germany and Sweden), of some “transit route member states” (Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia), and the atypical case of a country that was both transit and destination (Austria). The countries were selected on the basis of the experiences of the 2015 mass immigration, i.e. the most “popular” destinations and the transits along the Western Balkan route, which has carried the greatest refugee flow to the European Union in 2015-2016.

This Joint Policy Study was written in the framework of the EuroMeSCo Working Package “Mapping Migration Challenges in the EU Transit and Destination Countries”, led by the Institute for Foreign Affairs and Trade.