Administrative Flexibility: a factor of rapprochement or compartmentalization? The Voluntary Relocation Exercise for Unaccompanied Minors and Vulnerable Families from Greece to other Member States (2020–2023)

Executive summary

This paper examines the Voluntary Relocation Exercise from Greece (2020-2023), through which 5.059 people were relocated to thirteen Member States and three associated countries, with over 95 per cent of commitments implemented despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on participant observation, documentary analysis and nineteen interviews, it asks why a non-binding mechanism achieved substantial implementation. The paper argues that political voluntarism lowered the threshold for participation, while common procedures, recurrent coordination and Best Interest Assessments made that participation operationally meaningful. It distinguishes an “equipped” flexibility, embedded in a shared procedural floor, from an “à la carte” flexibility, where national preferences dominate and reproduce compartmentalisation. The programme does not show that voluntary solidarity outperforms binding solidarity, and it could not remedy the structural imbalances of the Dublin system.

For the Pact on Migration and Asylum, the paper recommends standardised procedures with explicit adaptation clauses, national preferences bound by common protection objectives, evaluation that goes beyond transfer numbers to substantive outcomes, and the preservation of institutional memory. Flexibility should concern the means of implementation, not the existence of responsibility.