Reform of the EU Sugar Regime: Impacts on Sugar Production in Ireland

average with regard to the percentage of asylum seekers it allows to stay
in its country in a particular year and which takes the value 0 if the
percentage of protection seekers allowed to stay is above the OECD
average.

Finally, much of the discussion of the past few years has focused on the
potential pull-effects entailed in a third category of asylum policy, namely
that of integration measures for asylum seekers. Here three policy aspects
are often regarded as being crucial: first, freedom of movement vs. a
compulsory dispersal policy; second, cash welfare payments vs. a system of
vouchers; and third, the right to work under certain conditions vs. a
general prohibition to take up employment as an asylum seeker. The first
of these concerns the right of asylum seekers to move freely within their
country of destination until their asylum claim has been determined.

While a federal state such as Germany has always had central reception
centres from which asylum seekers are be dispersed to the different
Lander according to their relative population size, some unitary states—
most notably the UK—have recently introduced similar measures.

Although dispersal measures first and foremost are an attempt to
alleviate pressures from particular (usually metropolitan) areas which are
faced with a strong concentration of asylum seekers, such measures are
also hoped to deter unfounded asylum claims. Second, the 'cash' payment
of welfare benefits cash rather than a payment 'in kind' or through a
voucher system has sometimes been regarded as a pull-factor for asylum
seekers.²⁵ This has led a number of OECD countries to stop giving asylum
seekers cash benefits and to replace cash payments by the direct provision
of housing, food and health care. In 1999, the UK and Ireland introduced a
voucher system for asylum seekers, despite the fact that the two
governments were advised that such a system would be more costly to

²⁵ The British government, for example, resisted pressures to abolish the UK’s voucher
scheme. Government advisors warned that ‘re-introducing cash benefits would create a
“pull factor” for thousands more asylum seekers’ (‘Details of Blunkett’s asylum shake up’,
The Guardian, 7 February 2002).

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