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This paper contributes to the debate on the development of the future common European Union Policy on Asylum and Immigration. It seeks to explain the rationale behind the evolution of the Union’s policy outlook on asylum and immigration. It then analyses the most recent Union-wide policy tools available to address asylum and migration issues, arguing that common European asylum policies thus far have focused on containment of migration flows seen as a threat to the European internal security regime and in response to perceived populist pressures. The return and readmission clauses now being implemented, in agreements with countries outside of the Union, serve to illustrate this point, as does the political willingness to extra-territorialize asylum processing. However, the focus on eliminating the root causes of migration flows is a relatively new paradigm, developed since th