The emerging architecture of EU asylum policy: insights into the administrative governance of the common European asylum system

Crisis vocabulary has consistently dominated public discourse on asylum in both the EU and its Member States since 2015. The spike in arrivals of individuals seeking asylum in the EU highlighted the limitations inherent in the legal design and implementation modes of EU asylum policy, most notably the existence of a structural solidarity deficit.1 These developments came shortly after the completion of the second phase of legislative harmonisation in the EU asylum policy in June 2013 and the establishment of a Common European Asylum System (CEAS), which was heralded as a historic achievement. At that point, EU institutions and Member States believed that asylum policy had been fully hammered out and they heralded the dawn of the ‘age of implementation’.2.