Common European Asylum System in a Changing World

and justice in November 2004. It declares that “[t]he aims of the Common European Asylum System in its second phase will be the establishment of a common asylumprocedure and a uniform status for those who are granted asylum or subsidiary protection .” The European Council invited the Commission to evaluate first-phase legal instruments and submit the second-phase instruments and measures for the adoption by the end of 2010 . It should be noted that the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe was signed in October 2004 in Rome, including new legal basis for measures on asylum. Article III-266 explicitly mentioned CEAS and foresaw laying down rules on a uniform status of asylum and subsidiary protection, common procedures for the granting and withdrawing from uniform asylum or subsidiary protection status etc. Article III-268 introduced the principle of solidarity and fair sharing of responsibility , including its financial implications, between the Member States. Nevertheless, the so-called Constitutional Treaty was not ratified which was probably the main reason why the second-phase instruments were not adopted by 2010. The Lisbon Treaty which was signed in 2007 and entered into force on 1 December 2009, stims from of the Constitutional Treaty and comprises almost identical provisions on asylum in Article 78 and 80 TFEU. The decision-making procedure is different in comparison with the procedure used to adopt first-phase asylum legislation, it is fully “communitarized”. Already the Treaty of Nice (entry into force in 2003) introduced co-decision procedure in this area under conditions stipulated in Article 67(5) TEC, i.e. the Council acts mostly by a qualified majority together with the European Parliament. Under the Lisbon Treaty, the appropriate measures are to be adopted in ordinary legislative procedure which is a modified co-decision procedure. Moreover, the Lisbon Treaty made the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU a binding document. The Charter guarantees the right to asylum in Article 18 and thus strengthens the human rights dimension of asylum in the EU. The European Council observed in the European Pact on Immigration and Asylum approved in October 2008 that “considerable disparities remain between one Member State and another concerning the grant of protection and the forms that protection takes.” It agrees with the creation of the European Asylum Support Office and invites the Commission to present proposals for completing, the CEAS in 2012 at the latest, (it was presumable that the 2010 goal would not be reached). Subsequently, the Commission put forward its proposals into legislative process at the end of 2008 and in 2009, most of them were adopted in 2013. The second-phase legal instruments are as follows and they are still in force: • the Qualification Directive – Directive 2011/95/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 2011 on standards for the qualification of third- country nationals or stateless persons as beneficiaries of international protection, for a uniform status for refugees or for persons eligible for subsidiary protection, and for the content of the protection granted.

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