Common European Asylum System in a Changing World

• Second , the reform was not prepared with due diligence. The deadline for the transposition of the Asylum Procedures Directive and the Reception Conditions Directive passed on 20 July 2015. The Commission submitted the first package of its proposals on 4 May 2016, i.e. less than one year after the transposition deadline. Therefore, there was very little experience with the application of the new rules on asylum in the Member States which the Commission decided to revise and the revised legislation was hastily drafted. • Third , the Commission contends there is poor implementation of the current CEAS in the Member States. However, revised asylum rules cannot guarantee proper implementation either. It follows that the Commission should put more effort into the enforcement of current rules first before reforming it. • Fourth , in the Commission’s view, divergences in treatment of asylum seekers between Member States remain as a result of too much discretion that the States possess. It’s aim is to reduce the discretion, all proposed secondary law has a form of a regulation except for one (the Recast Reception Conditions Directive). Nevertheless, some scholars point out that the Member States tend to lean toward the intergovernmentalism instead because of the deadlock in negotiations on the CEAS reform, especially on the revision of the Dublin system (Pollet, 2019). Lastly, it should be added that the Commission submitted other proposals which are not included in the CEAS reform but they are closely related to it, for instance, the proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on common standards and procedures in Member States for returning illegally staying third-country nationals (recast), COM(2018) 634 final. This draft Recast Return Directive deals with the significant issue of returning irregular migrants, i.e. not just failed asylum seekers, staying on the territory of the EU Member States. QUESTIONS: 1. Are there any other legal options for regulation in case that the secondary legislation reforming the CEAS is not adopted? 2. What are the consequences of replacing directives (the Asylum Procedures Directive, the Qualification Directive) by regulations? Explain pros and cons. 3. Explain the approach of the EU to the principle of solidarity mentioned in Article 80 TFEU. What are the issues? Are there other options to accomplish the principle of solidarity besides the distribution of asylum seekers? EXERCISES: 1. Tracking legislative procedure in the area of CEAS Legislative procedure in the EU is a very complex and complicated process. Its main actors are: the European Commission which has nearly exclusive legislative initiative, and the European Parliament and the Council as the two co-legislators. A legislative act cannot be adopted without participation of these two co-legislators which participate in this process in various types of legislative procedures. The most frequent is a common legislative procedure. In this type of procedure, the Commission proposes the legislation, the European Parliament

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