Asylum Policy: A Measure of the EU’s Fidelity to Its History and Values

Abstract

In his last book, entitled ‘Amsterdam: From the Market to the European Society’, the late Professor Francisco Lucas Pires singled out the EU’s asylum law and policy as the measure of its fidelity to its history and values. He also expressed the hope that enlarging the ECJ’s jurisdiction in the area of asylum law and policy and elevating the right to request asylum to a constitutional right would remedy the problems arising from the entanglement of law with politics. Although these aspirations subsequently materialized, they were not sufficient to deal with the challenges that the EU and its asylum policy recently faced as a result of the influx of asylum seekers from Syria and other troubled parts of the world. These circumstances ultimately exposed not a legal but a political challenge to transform the European Union in the minds of its citizens from a necessity to a coherent identity.

The author is a senior associate at the International Arbitration Practice of Shearman & Sterling LLP. Prior to that, he was a référendaire for First Advocate General Melchior Wathelet at the European Court of Justice from 2012 to 2018. He is also a Lecturer at the Executive Master of European and International Business Law E.M.B.L.-HSG at the University of St. Gallen. Email: paschalis.paschalidis@shearman.com.