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Europe is currently experiencing a "refugee crisis", demonstrated by millions of displaced people unseen since World War II. This book examines the interface between the EU's response to irregular flows, in particular the main extraterritorial border and migration controls taken by the Member States, and the rights asylum seekers acquire from EU law.
"Remote control" techniques, such as the imposition of visas, fines on carriers transporting unsatisfactorily documented third-country nationals, and interception at sea are investigated in detail in a bid to assess the impact these measures have on access to asylum in the EU. The book also thoroughly analyses the rights recognised by the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights to persons in need of international protection, inclusive of the principle of non-refoulement, the right to leave any country including one's own, the right to asylum, and the right to remedies and effective judicial protection.
The fundamental focus of the book is the relationship between the aforementioned border and migration controls and the rights of asylum seekers and, most importantly, how these rights (should) limit the scope of such measures and the ways in which they are implemented. The ultimate goal is to conclude whether the current series of extraterritorial mechanisms of pre-entry vetting is compatible in EU law with the EU rights of forced migrants.
List of contents
- 1: Introduction: EU Pre-border Controls and Protection Seeker Flows
- Part I. The EU System of Pre-Border Control and its Implications for Access to International Protection in Europe
- 2: Chronology and Conceptualisation of 'Integrated Border Management': The 'Embodied Border' Paradigm
- 3: The Schengen Borders Code: Securitised Admission Criteria as the Centrepiece of 'Integrated Border Management' - Instilling Ambiguity
- 4: Common Visa Policy: Bordering from Abroad - Applying Admission Criteria before Departure
- 5: Carrier Sanctions and ILOs : Anticipated Enforcement of Visa Requirements through 'Imperfect Delegation' - Diverting Flows, Entrenching Unsafety
- 6: Frontex: Joint Maritime Interdiction of Undifferentiated Flows - Operationalising 'Pre-emptive Controls'
- Part II. The Rights of Protection Seekers under EU Law and their Implications for Pre-Border Controls
- 7: The Fundamental Rights Acquis: An 'Integrated Approach' to Interpretation - The 'Aggregate Standards' Model
- 8: EU Non-Refoulement: (The Irrelevance of) Territory and Pre-Border Controls
- 9: The Right to Asylum: An Individual Entitlement to (Access) International Protection
- 10: Remedies and Procedural Guarantees (and the Unavoidability of Access to Territory)
- Conclusions: Taking EU Refugee Rights Seriously
About the author
Dr. Violeta Moreno-Lax is Senior lecturer in Law, Founding Director of the Immigration Law programme, and inaugural co-Director and co-founder of the Centre for European and International Legal Affairs at Queen Mary University of London. She is also a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, a Fellow of the Centre of European Law of King's College London, EU Asylum Law Coordinator at the Refugee Law Initiative of the University of London, Co-Chair of The Refugee Law Observatory, Co-convener of the Society of Legal Scholars (SLS) Migration Law Section, and member of the Steering Committee of the Migration Law Network. Before Queen Mary, she was a Lecturer in Law at the Universities of Liverpool and Oxford. She held visiting positions at the Universities of Macquarie and New South Wales, Oxford, Nijmegen, and The Hague Academy of International Law (Research Session 2010). She has published widely in the areas of international and European refugee and migration law.
Summary
The timely subject matter of this book focuses on the interface between extraterritorial border surveillance and migration management by EU Member States and the rights that asylum seekers acquire from EU law. In particular, Moreno-Lax concentrates on the relationship between the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and mechanisms of pre-entry control.
Additional text
This book is well written and meticulous, offering brilliant insights into the human rights aspects of the EU's legal regulation of refugee flows.
Report
Moreno-Lax has written one of the key texts on EU migration and asylum law for the years to come. Her steady defence of rights as "practical and effective" and "not theoretical and illusory" (p. 477) and, more importantly, the way such defence is conducted through impeccable legal analysis of the instruments adopted by the EU itself, is already having an impact beyond academia and will be at the centre of policy debates in the future. The book is therefore an indispensable title, and essential reading for students, scholars, legal practitioners and judges, aswell as policy makers and EU institutions dealing with borders, immigration, and asylum. Diego Acosta, Common Market Law Review
