Save Access to Asylum in Europe

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Pauline Endres de Oliveira
• Subject Area: Public Law
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 536055414

The thesis analyzes and evaluates safe pathways to protection in the context of European Union law. The starting point is the “asylum paradox”, a term this thesis coins to describe the paradoxical interplay between granting territorial protection on the one hand and preventing access to the territory on the other. From a normative perspective, the thesis examines how safe pathways to protection can affect the asylum paradox. Drawing on the long-standing scholarly debate on the tension between the principles of sovereignty, human rights, and solidarity in refugee law, the thesis argues that the asylum paradox is the result of an imbalance of responsibility principles. Based on this assumption, the thesis develops a framework for analyzing and evaluating safe entry routes: the “responsibility framework”. This analytical framework is composed of a triad of responsibility principles: The internal responsibility of states for all those who are part of the “internal community” (internal community); the external responsibility of states for protection seekers who are not (yet) part of that community of a state; and the interstate responsibility between states at the global level. Safe pathways to protection, specifically asylum visas, resettlement, humanitarian admission programs, and sponsorship programs, are analyzed within this framework and evaluated in terms of a possible normative effect on the asylum paradox. In doing so, the “responsibility framework” serves as a structure as well as an evaluative tool for the analysis. At first sight, safe pathways to protection promise to balance the principles of responsibility: Protection seekers gain access to territory, while states can control entry and ultimately show solidarity with countries in the global South that host the majority of the world’s protection seekers. However, the thesis identifies fundamental normative differences between the asylum visa as an individual access route and resettlement and ad hoc admission programs based on admission quotas.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants