Implementing the United Nations Global Compact on Refugees? Global Asylum Governance and the Role of the European Union (original) (raw)
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CEPS Paper in Liberty and Security in Europe, 2019
The Global Compact on Refugees (GCR), adopted in December 2018 by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, expresses the political will of UN member states and relevant stakeholders to foster responsibility sharing for refugees and their host countries. Among GCR key objectives is that of expanding mobility and admission channels for people in search of international protection through resettlement and ‘complementary’ pathways of admission. The GCR provides a reference framework to critically assess European Union (EU) policies in relation to two main issues: first, the role and contribution of the EU and its Member States towards the implementation of the GCR in ways that are loyal to the Compact and EU Treaties guiding principles; second, and more specifically, the main gaps and contested issues of existing resettlement and complementary admission instruments for refugees and would-be refugees implemented at the EU and Member State levels. This paper argues that EU policies in the field of asylum and migration have been driven by a ‘contained mobility’ approach, which has been recently operationalised in the scope of EU third country arrangements like the 2016 EU-Turkey Statement. Under this approach, restrictive and selective mobility/admission arrangements for refugees have been progressively consolidated and used in exchange of, or as incentives for, third country commitments to EU readmission and expulsions policy. The paper concludes by recommending that the EU moves from an approach focused on ‘contained mobility’ towards one that places refugee’s rights and agency at the centre through facilitated resettlement and other complementary pathways driven by a fundamental rights and international protection rationale.
International Journal of Refugee Law (IJRL), 2023
This article argues that the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) is not only a breakthrough for a rights-based approach in international migration governance but also an asset to the international protection system. By way of example, three key issues of the European Union’s (EU) Common European Asylum System are discussed: access to protection, reception conditions, and detention. These examples illustrate that faithfully implementing the Migration Compact would require the EU and its Member States to make significant changes in their asylum policy. The parallel emergence of the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) may suggest otherwise – namely, that the GCM is not relevant for refugees and other protection-seeking migrants. However, the legal construction that best serves the object and purpose of both documents is the assumption that the two Compacts have an overlapping scope of application. The GCM addresses specific protection needs of protection-seeking migrants who are not covered by the 1951 Refugee Convention, and it serves as an umbrella, strengthening the core human rights of migrants regardless of their status, including protection-seeking migrants. Hence, the GCM improves the international protection system as a whole and should be acknowledged as such.
From an examination of the instruments of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) and related policy measures regarding border surveillance and migration management, two interrelated issues stand out as particularly sensitive: access to asylum and responsibility for refugee protection. The prevailing view, supported by the UNHCR and others, is that responsibility for the care of asylum seekers and the determination of their claims falls on the state within whose jurisdiction the claim is made. However, the possibility to shift that responsibility to another state through inter-state cooperation or unilateral mechanisms undertaken territorially as well as abroad has been a matter of great interest to EU Member States and institutions. Initiatives adopted so far challenge the prevailing view and have the potential to undermine compliance with international refugee and human rights law.
The UN Global Compacts and the Common European Asylum System: Coherence or Friction?
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This paper examines the “protective potential” of the Global Compacts on Refugees and Migrants vis à vis existing commitments to fundamental rights within the European Union (EU). The relationship between the two normative frameworks is scrutinised to establish the extent to which the two might be mutually supportive or contradictory, since this determines the Compacts’ capacity to inform the interpretation of EU fundamental rights within the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). This paper explores this protective potential through three of the Compacts’ key guiding principles: respect for human rights and the rule of law, the principle of non-regression, and the principle of non-discrimination. The Compacts’ commitments to the first two are presented as sites of coherence where the Compacts concretely express pre-existing protections within EU law and provide a blueprint for implementation in the migration sphere. However, the Compacts’ principle of non-discrimination reveals an a...
CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research - Zenodo, 2022
This paper explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on refugees' and migrants' access to human rights protection in the European Union, in light of its Member States' commitments in the UN Global Compacts on Refugees and Migrants (Compacts). It holds that those in precarious and vulnerable positions vis-à-vis the State were among the first to experience a loss of access to rights in the face of the pandemic. Through analysis of the commitments made in the Global Compacts and their relationship to existing legal frameworks, as expressed in the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) and European Human Rights treaties, we assess implementation and policy in response to COVID-19. We contend that both the CEAS and the Compacts balance the human rights protections of refugees and migrants against the observance of state sovereign control over borders. A focus on three areas of contention in EU law and policy: access to migration procedures, use of immigration detention, and access to healthcare, demonstrates that there was a fragmented response to the pandemic based upon differing accounts of this balance. The paper concludes that, in line with the Global Compacts' call for respect for the human rights of refugees and migrants, States are obliged by their Global Compact commitments to extend basic healthcare and social service provisions to all migrants and refugees as well as to release those detained under immigration powers. This would go a long way to preserve their basic rights in the face of COVID-19 and ensure EU policy is in line with the commitments made within the Global Compacts.
The Common European Asylum System and the 2015 European refugee crisis
This thesis approaches the topic of migration and asylum seeking within the European Union and analyzes the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). Through the use of the theory of intergovernmentalism it argues how CEAS was created and how states were able to bargain in order to cede control over irregular migrants to the European Union. Then by using the theory of securitization, it is argued that migration became securitized which lead Member States to reclaim power over migration and asylum seeking. It will argue that the European Union's response to the large increase in irregular migration into EU territory in 2015 shows the limits of the European institutional framework in the asylum policy. While there is much cooperation within the European Union, when faced with security issues, of which migration and asylum are a part, Member States are reticent of giving up sovereignty.
For more than two decades, Member States of the European Union have been trying to harmonise and integrate asylum policies to share the physical and financial burdens that asylum seekers carry. The EU is working toward a system, called Common European Asylum System, on how to share these burdens. The future CEAS has a legal cornerstone, namely the ‘Dublin’ rules. According to the basic Dublin rule only one state can be held responsible for an asylum application. To help states commit to the Dublin rule, strengthen CEAS, and to make sure that MSs act upon international obligations regarding the human rights of asylum seekers, the EU has established a European Asylum Support Office. My research regarding the reasons behind the route towards this increased cooperation answers the following research question: How can increased cooperation between member states be explained through burden-sharing within the field of asylum migration? The motivations of MSs to comply with the EU burden-sharing initiatives can be explained through International Relations theory: via the logic of benefits (neo-realism) and the logic of appropriateness (constructivism). My research has shown that MSs acted and still act upon the logic of benefits; their actions have had and still have implications for the lives of asylum seekers as shown in the case study (Lampedusa). In this thesis, I also emphasise the important role of EASO to convince MSs to take responsibility for the asylum seekers and to show that the EU can be a safe harbour for people applying for asylum. If Mss take their responsibility, it will create credibility with respect to the EU. It will show the EU complies with its international obligations to protect people in the need of protection. The latter is extremely important if the EU wants to make the future CEAS a credible and enduring system in reality.
EURINT, 2018
European Union's policies on migration and asylum raise double-ditched problems. In the EU, the latter's Court stated that in these areas solidarity is a binding principle: consequently, EU Member States must comply with EU decisions assigning quotas of international protection seekers to each EU State. The paper inspects also agreements between, on one hand, EU Member States (or the EU as such) and, on the other, non-EU countries as origin or transit States of international protection seekers with the view of relocating such individuals to those latter countries. This practice raises doubts if latter countries were deemed non-safe states, e.g. in case they weren't part to 1951 Geneva Convention. These issues are relevant for the development of relations between EU and its member states as well as in the perspective that EU performs its international legal personality in full compliance to international law rules on migration and human rights protection.