Going Unnoticed? Diagnosing the Right to Asylum in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union

Abstract

Article 18 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union enshrines the right to asylum. Nonetheless, despite its ‘constitutionalisation’ within primary law, asylum remains a far too amorphous right, whose axiological potential has gone virtually unnoticed in the ongoing migratory crisis. The paper will argue that this is partly due to the fact that the Court of Justice on a few occasions has declined to clarify the scope of Article 18. The provision at issue therefore remains a pathological element that requires an adequate diagnosis on which accurate prognoses can be based. In an attempt to diagnose the right to asylum enshrined in Article 18 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, this paper will compare different hermeneutical approaches and reflect on the contextualisation of the mentioned provision through the lens of domestic and EU case law and in the light of the recent EU–Turkey Statement. The article will ultimately propose to interpret the EU asylum legislation as instrumental to the effective exercise of the right to asylum.