Complementing and completing the Common European Asylum System: a legal analysis of the emerging extraterritorial elements of EU refugee protection policy

Abstract:

Regulation 343/2003, the Dublin Regulation, putting in place a mechanism to determine responsibility for asylum claims has, to date, proven a dismal failure. This has resulted in certain EU Member States taking increasingly drastic measures to control their borders and proposing solutions which shatter the current mould for refugee protection measures. One such radical initiative proposed that asylum claims be processed extraterritorially. Although never implemented, this initiative marked a shift in thinking; since then increasing emphasis has been laid upon extraterritorial methods to improve refugee protection. What these measures have in common is that they envisage actions taken outside the EU's borders, what distinguishes them is that some fall within the EU's external relations policy whilst others fall within the scope of the Common European Asylum System. These novel systems hae received little legal scrutiny thus far and therefore this paper aims to shed some light on them.