Victims of human trafficking in the asylum procedure. A legal analysis of the guarantees for 'vulnerable persons' under the second generation of EU asylum legislation

Victims of human trafficking have been designated as a group of migrants in need of special assistance and protection. As a result, a whole legal framework has been developed revolving around this group. Within Europe, this framework operates on two levels: the Council of Europe and the EU. EU law has added an additional layer of sophistication with its second generation of asylum legislation. The category ‘victims of human trafficking’ has been added to the group of persons considered as ‘vulnerable persons’ who might be in need of special reception conditions and/or special procedural guarantees. The objective of this article is to investigate how the above indicated legal instruments interact with each other