The Refugee Crisis: A Litmus test for the European Union?

According to mainstream discourse, the EU is facing a “refugee crisis” due to a mass influx of asylum seekers, which is putting the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) under pressure. Although this paper acknowledges that the CEAS is currently under pressure, it aims to take a different view from the assumption that the – admittedly significant – arrival of asylum seekers constitutes the root of the crisis the EU is going through. It suggests that the problems encountered by the CEAS are rather symptomatic of a deeper gridlock resulting from this system's lack of compliance with the EU’s fundamental values, the respect of which constitutes the “fundamental premise” of EU integration. From both an historical and a legal perspective, the EU is indeed founded on a set of values ranging from the respect of human dignity, human rights and solidarity. The treaties further require their respect internally (i.e. Articles 2 and 6 TEU), but also vis-à-vis the rest of the world (i.e. Articles 3(5) and 21 TEU). However, the current responses to the arrival of asylum-seekers are, in several respects, in contradiction with these founding values. On the one hand, the internal management of the influx of refugees reveals a lack of solidarity which, moreover, leads to breaches of asylum-seekers’ fundamental rights. On the other, the EU’s asylum policy does not meet the requirement according to which the Union shall, in its relations with the wider world, uphold and promote its values. These observations lead us to believe that facing the refugee challenge constitutes, from a normative perspective at least, a litmus test for the EU at large. Indeed, the EU’s difficulties in dealing with the arrival of the asylum seekers – which have already been the subject of extensive research – appear to be the evidence of an identity crisis, besides being a crisis in itself. The way the EU, hand in hand with its Member States, responds to this challenge thus amounts to a “decisively indicative test” for its normative foundations that are a prerequisite for the viability of the entire undertaking, and, notably, of the principle of mutual trust. Having first demonstrated that the EU is founded on a set of values, this paper will go on to demonstrate that the CEAS entails serious infringements of the EU’s axiological identity. It will conclude that the management of the refugees’ arrival constitutes a litmus test for the European project at large