The Common European Asylum System and the Plight of International Protection Seekers – Ensuring Protection of Human Rights in Times of Crisis and Emergency

Political debates and popular discussions of mass migration and refugee flows are increasingly dominated by a language of ‘crisis’ and the measures adopted at European Union (EU) level are conceived with an emergency-driven mind-set. This has led to the rise of unorthodox institutional and policy developments as a pragmatic rather than a legal response to address the formidable challenges posed by the mass movement of refugees that is witnessed in Europe. [1] Schengen once seemed like a hermetic system: sealed, internally fluid and unbreakable. [2] But that was before the conflict in Syria sent a veritable flood of displaced people in search of a safe harbour into Europe. [3]