23 October 2024
Getting a Grip on Migration but Mind European Law!
On September 13, the new Dutch government led by Dick Schoof outlined its programme for the next years. Unsurprisingly, a major point of this programme regards asylum and migration, for which the greatest ambition is to install the strictest regime ever and to include the Netherlands within the category of Member States of the European Union with the strictest admission rules. This post reviews these proposals through the lens of European Law to challenge their legal feasibility and flag the potential incompatibility with Dutch obligations stemming from EU and international law. Continue reading >>
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17 October 2024
Unleashing Horizontal State Liability
The Common European Asylum System (CEAS) is under attack. In a recent Judgment against Hungary, the European Court of Justice has unambiguously stated that non-compliance with the rules of the CEAS undermines solidarity between Member States and strikes at the very heart of EU law. Traditional means of enforcement, however, seem insufficient to foster compliance with these rules. Against this backdrop, this blogpost argues for the unexplored avenue for enforcing the CEAS via horizontal state liability. Continue reading >>28 February 2024
The Future of Legal Struggles
The year 2023 was not a good year for the rights of asylum seekers. The decision about a new legal framework for the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) was described as a "historic moment" (Ylva Johansson), but in fact works as a programme of disenfranchisement. If the pursuit of progressive positions are blocked in the political arena, actors shift their strategies to the judicial field. Even before the summer of migration 2015, successful legal struggles had a significant impact on European migration policy. Push-backs on the high sea were prohibited and transfers of asylum seekers to inhumane conditions under the Dublin system were prevented. The draft for the new CEAS are characterised by attempts to circumvent the consequences of these judgements. In this blogpost, I will discuss what the future of legal struggles within the framework of the new CEAS might look like. Continue reading >>
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28 February 2024
Asylum-Seekers’ Right to Free Movement
Restricting the freedom of movement of unwanted asylum seekers is the conceptual core of the CEAS reform package politically agreed upon by the EU’s legislative institutions in December 2023. Large groups of the people seeking international protection in the EU will be subject to so-called border procedures. Their claims will be processed while being ‘kept at or in proximity to the external border or transit zones’ (Commission proposal) in order to prevent their onward movement and to facilitate ensuing deportations. Introducing such confinement measures will be mandatory for all Member States, provided that an asylum seeker meets certain criteria, in particular a low rate of success of earlier protection claims made by his or her fellow nationals, calculated on an EU-wide average. Why did we fail to make asylum-seekers’ right to free movement relevant in context of the CEAS reform? Continue reading >>
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26 February 2024
Rethinking the Law and Politics of Migration
2023 was, to put it mildly, a terrible year for (im)migrants and their human rights. With the declared end of the Covid pandemic came an end to the exceptional border policies it had led to which had further restricted already weakened migrants’ rights. Yet governments have largely chosen to replace them with legal frameworks that incorporated many of the same rights negating policies and ideas- except for this time they put them on a permanent legal basis. Liberated from their initial emergency rationales, asylum bans have now joined outsourcing and overpopulated mass detention camps as standard methods of migration governance. What is the role of legal scholarship and discourse at a time where governments seem increasingly comfortable to eschew many long-standing legal rules and norms, often with majority support? Continue reading >>
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25 June 2023
Human Rights Violations to Deflect Refugees
The Council of the European Union (EU) recently reached a negotiating position (‘mandate’) on two significant elements of the ‘reform’ of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). The vision hailed as a ‘historic’ agreement by national governments is a direct threat to the right to asylum. The Council not only maintains all structural flaws of the CEAS intact but proposes a quagmire of asylum procedures marred by unworkable, unnecessarily complex rules, that are in clear violation of key human rights standards. Continue reading >>28 March 2023
Navigating Uncharted Waters?
This contribution will briefly assess Ireland’s participation in the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) after ‘Brexit’. It will first review the way in which the ‘opt-in/opt-out’ arrangements still apply to Ireland, before considering how Ireland’s position might have evolved after Brexit. In this respect, it will feature some recent cases of the CJEU. Although Ireland considers the UK to be a safe third country for refugees, it is likely that their respective asylum policies will diverge even further, owing to their now very different positions with respect to EU law and especially the CEAS. Continue reading >>
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