The European Union's executive is set to lay out options that it says will ensure a fairer distribution of refugees across the bloc.
Under the EU's so-called Dublin rules, asylum seekers must register their claim in the first member state they set foot in, and that country decides whether to accept or reject the request.
For most of the more than one million people reaching the bloc last year, this would have been Greece.
But the country was overwhelmed by the arrivals, letting many of them continue their journey unchecked towards wealthy northern European states such as Germany and Sweden.
The European Commission is expected on Wednesday to outline two options to reform the Dublin system, according to a draft communication seen by DPA.
The initial aim is to spark debate among member states, with concrete legislative proposals due to follow later.
Under the first alternative, all EU-wide asylum seekers would be assigned to member states according to a distribution key taking into account the country's size, wealth and capacity to absorb them.
Other factors such as family links would also be taken into account.
The commission is to suggest that the European Asylum Support Office could ultimately be tasked with processing asylum claims, according to the draft document.
This would establish a "single and centralised decision-making process", harmonising procedures and ensuring a "fair sharing of responsibility" among member states, the draft says.
Under the second option, the Dublin system would be kept in place, complemented with a "corrective fairness mechanism" that would be triggered if a mass inflow of asylum seekers places heavy pressures on a given member state.
Once the number of arrivals hits a predefined threshold for that country, a share of asylum seekers would be reallocated across the EU, according to a distribution key.
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