The European Asylum System between crises, emergency mechanisms, and reform proposals

After the unprecedented refugee flows registered in the European Union (EU) in 2015-16, the issue of asylum became a pivotal one in national, European, and global political agendas, and European institutions felt compelled to take countermeasures to the so-called “refugee crisis.” This paper aims to provide a diachronic overview of the evolution of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) from 2010 to 2021, the decade of the humanitarian crisis, examining both the general legal framework and the “ad hoc” crisis response through the lens of CEAS’ core principles implementation. First, the paper analyses the “emergency” initiatives taken by EU institutions to address the unfolding crisis and to support the Member States both internally and at their borders. These include, for example, the relocation system, introduced to transfer responsibility for certain applications to EU countries other than the countries of first entry, and the EU-Turkey declaration, aimed at limiting the number of migrants entering Greece from Turkey. Second, the paper reviews EU efforts to reform the CEAS in the years following the events of 2015-16, again examining the primary and secondary legislation already entered into force, as well as European legislative proposals currently under discussion on asylum issues. The analysis will be enriched by an examination of European asylum data, which serves both as a backdrop for the study and as a means to capture the role of Member States in managing refugee flows.