Migration crisis: Macedonia on crossroads

Abstract Macedonia is witnessing the largest migrant crisis which is driving an unprecedented number of people going on life-threatening journeys to safety. At his point we can say that Macedonian as well as the European Union’s common policy on asylum lacks solidarity and consistency to deal with this problem. Even though we are not a frontline country to the Schengen zone, still the geographical position of Macedonia (being the crossroad on the Balkan) puts us in a very controversial position in this migration crisis context. Some of the aspects of this paper are to evaluate the key aspects of the Macedonian asylum system and their conformity with international standards and to point out the ongoing changes in our asylum policy as well as to stress the drawbacks of the current system. Given the fact that there are many international instruments that consider asylum in one way or the other, we will make an effort to define asylum and its procedure according the most important instruments relevant for the EU Asylum policy. Therefore, we’ll elaborate the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, EU’s Common European Asylum System and the Dublin system. Also we’ll try to illustrate the ongoing situation with asylum seekers trough numbers in order to catch the full picture about the ongoing asylum crises