International refugee law and EU asylum law:accordance and influence

Throughout its development, the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) has had a mutually influential relationship with international refugee law, and with global approaches to forced migration. This chapter traces these relationships and compares the resulting refugee protection regime versus that envisioned by the 1951 Geneva Convention. It does so along three policy dimensions: the CEAS's implementation of the Convention; the ways in which EU asylum procedures shape its application; and the extraordinary measures the EU and its Member States are undertaking, in cooperation with non-EU states and with private actors, to physically prevent refugees from approaching the EU's borders at all. The chapter concludes that the CEAS has steered the EU and the Member States toward a broader and more inclusive understanding of refugee status and refugee rights, but has been co-opted into a larger system of migration control that aims first at deflecting migrants, thereby evading refugee protection responsibilities.