Gonzalez Vega, Javier A. --- "Non-refoulement at risk? Asylums disconnection mechanisms in recent EU practice" [2019] ELECD 1336; in Carrera, Sergio; Santos Vara, Juan; Strik, Tineke (eds), "Constitutionalising the External Dimensions of EU Migration Policies in Times of Crisis" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 75

Book Title: Constitutionalising the External Dimensions of EU Migration Policies in Times of Crisis

Editor(s): Carrera, Sergio; Santos Vara, Juan; Strik, Tineke

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section: Chapter 5

Section Title: Non-refoulement at risk? Asylums disconnection mechanisms in recent EU practice

Author(s): González Vega, Javier A.

Number of pages: 20

Abstract/Description:

The development of CEAS has made possible the creation and progressive enhancement of an international protection system inside the EU, covering not only refugees but other situations – namely collective – where protection benefits people threatened outside the strict terms of the Geneva Convention. Notwithstanding, at the same time CEAS has introduced mechanisms through which the protection afforded by the Geneva Convention is eluded: the Disconnection procedures. Conceived initially by singular Member States – the ‘safe country’ notion – this practice was progressively enlarged to include the ‘third safe country’ and the ‘internal flight’ case and generalised through the ‘Aznar Protocol’ – adopted in 1997 and subsequently revised. Recent EU developments after the Refugees’ Crisis of 2015 try to extend those notions not only through the CEAS’s reform still in progress, but also through the new impulse given to the migratory policies, specially by the readmission agreements to be concluded by the EU. The chapter explores the consistency of those developments with the telos of the Geneva Convention – namely the non-refoulement principle – and its coherence with the judicial limits related to the expulsion of aliens set out by European Courts.