Dublin II regulation. On March 10, 2008 a Swedish court ruled against the return of a disabled Iraqi asylum seeker to Greece under the terms of the Dublin II regulation. Also, in early 2008, the European Commission initiated an infringement procedure against Greece for preventing access to asylum procedures for persons returned under the Dublin regulation. The Commission will consider whether those returned to Greece are able to gain access to asylum procedures. As the European Commission proposes amendments to the Dublin II regulation and the Reception Conditions Directive in late 2008, Greece and other Mediterranean EU member states are questioning what they regard as a disproportionate burden that Dublin II creates for member states on the external borders of the EU. At the same time, some member states are questioning the underlying presumption that returns take place among states that have harmonized their standards and procedures for establishing asylum claims and their standards for the reception of asylum seekers, the integration of refugees, and the return of rejected asylum seekers. Greece’s treatment of asylum seekers brings into question whether, in fact, such harmonization exists and whether an asylum seeker in Greece has the same opportunity to find protection as in other EU states. Although some EU states are beginning to have reservations about sending asylum seekers back to Greece, the EU is not meeting its responsibilities to protect refugees fleeing Iraq. It has effectively laid the burden on a few states at the EU’s external borders that have limited capacity to deal not only with the influx of refugees from Iraq, but also the larger mixed stream of migrants and asylum seekers seeking entry to the EU. The EU lacks not only a common asylum policy for people seeking asylum inside the EU, but an external refugee policy as well that would provide support for refugees outside the EU through resettlement and other burden-sharing measures in the region of displacement that could reduce the need of Iraqis to seek asylum outside their region. Human Rights Watch recommends first that the governments of Greece and Turkey respect the basic human rights of migrants, including rights not to be abused, held in inhuman and degrading conditions of detention, to be granted the right to seek asylum and not to be summarily expelled, particularly when doing so constitutes refoulement, subjecting the returnee to persecution, torture, or other serious harm. Secondly, Human Rights Watch recommends that in consideration of their own non-refoulement obligations, EU states should suspend transfers of asylum seekers back to Greece, and Stuck in a Revolving Door 6