The past year has yet to deliver any meaningful reforms of the EU's fractured internal asylum system.
The half-dozen bills under discussion remain either mired in political standoffs, or left on the desks of understaffed and overworked EU delegations.
In October, the EU's council president Donald Tusk set a deadline to finalise the asylum package "with a view to reaching a consensus in the first half of 2018."
It is a familiar refrain that ignores the more practical aspects...
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Nikolaj joined EUobserver in 2012 and covers home affairs. He is originally from Denmark, but spent much of his life in France and in Belgium. He was awarded the King Baudouin Foundation grant for investigative journalism in 2010.