seeker's decision as to which country to apply to (UK Home Office 2002).24
First, in the area of access control, arguably the most important measure
was the introduction of so called 'safe third country' provisions, which
mean that persons seeking asylum will be refused entry into a country, if
on their way to this country they travelled though another state which the
first country regards as safe and in which the asylum seeker could have
applied for asylum. If an asylum seeker's travel route only transpires in
the course of the determination procedure, he or she can be sent back to
the 'safe third country'. The introduction of 'safe third country provisions'
across Europe meant that asylum seekers travelling 'overland' to Europe
were no longer able to legitimately claim asylum in the country of their
destination, as the responsibility for their case was shifted on a
neighbouring country through which they had travelled. To account for the
introduction of safe third country provisions, I created a dummy variable
which takes the value 1 for each year that safe third country provisions
were applied in a country and the value 0 for all other years.
Second, with respect to a country's determination procedures, the most
important potential pull factors that can be influenced by national policy-
makers are the rules concerning the granting of subsidiary protection
status which allows an asylum seeker to remain in a country of
destination even though their application for full refugee status under the
Geneva Convention is refused. Destination countries have complete
discretion in defining the requirements that protection seekers have to
fulfil to be awarded such subsidiary status which means that within
Europe the percentage of asylum seekers allowed to stay in a country on
the basis of the award of some protection status varies from single figures
to over 70 percent (UNHCR 1999). Again, I have created a dummy
variable which takes the value 1 if a country of destination is below the
24 Other relevant indicators such as a countries' detention and deportation rates, their
visa requirements, their readmission agreements with third countries have not yet been
included in the index for lack of comparative data. However, these measure are expected
to positively correlate with the other indicators used here and their omission is there not
expected to significantly distort the results.
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