EU / Migration | Asylum law is becoming an optional provision in the EU

In the Spanish exclave of Ceuta, camps of migrants who arrived at the end of July were destroyed at the weekend, and there are also said to have been "repatriations" to Morocco again. Photo: AFP/Antonio Sempere The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights contains clear wording regarding the protection of refugees. According to Article 18, the right to asylum is guaranteed under the applicable UN conventions and the EU Treaty. And Article 19 makes it clear: “Collective expulsions are not permitted.” Likewise, no one may be “removed or expelled from or extradited to a State in which he or she is at serious risk of being subject to the death penalty, torture or other inhuman or degrading punishment or treatment.”

That's the theory, which has been violated by EU member states for years, especially in the context of so-called pushbacks, i.e. illegal rejections at the alliance's external borders under Community law. Now the EU Commission and several states apparently want to legalize this practice retroactively. The magic word is “emergency mechanism” or “crisis response framework” (European Emergency Response Framework). In the case of mass entries that are presumably controlled by a state or other forces, the possibility should be created to temporarily suspend the individual right to asylum and thus enable the prohibited collective returns. Those seeking protection then no longer have a chance to articulate their request for asylum.

At the meetings of the EU Prime Ministers on October 15th and 16th, a corresponding proposal was discussed by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, but has not yet been decided. For Spain and France, the resulting breach of the EU Charter apparently goes too far. And even German Chancellor Friedrich Merz made a clear statement about this. Nevertheless, the CDU chairman said at a press conference in Brussels on Friday that there was still a lot to do despite the already massively tightened EU asylum rules: "Irregular migration is one of the biggest problems we have in Europe."

»Bringing people to Morocco without trial undermines fundamental rights. Ceuta shows once again how European law is systematically trampled on the external border.

A welcome reason for von der Leyen and others to call for the new emergency mechanism was the mass exodus of up to 72,000 people from Morocco to the Spanish exclave of Ceuta at the end of July. This in turn only has around 80,000 inhabitants. At least 140 people died trying to reach Ceuta. Aid organizations assume a significantly higher number. The head of the commission presented her proposal for this in mid-September. She explained that she wanted to enable “temporary flexibility” in the asylum rules if migration movements were “used as a weapon against the EU”. According to them, the directive should be approved by the end of the year.

At a meeting of EU interior ministers on October 1st, the German department head Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) and his Austrian colleague Gerhard Karner clearly spoke out in favor of the project. Dobrindt called for the EU border agency Frontex to form a “rapid reaction force” that could carry out immediate deportations in cases like that of Ceuta without examining individual cases.

In practice, this is exactly what happened within just a few days of ten thousand people crossing the border: the vast majority of those who had reached Ceuta were escorted out of the city area within a very short period of time and some were driven back to their places of origin by bus. Initially, it was mainly young people under the age of 18 who remained in the exclave, but also women with children.

However, on Sunday, migrant camps were destroyed with excavators and bulldozers. According to the Spanish police, the residents were taken to unspecified centers outside Ceuta. The German aid organization Mission Lifeline reported on Monday that the information was based on centers “around Ceuta”. Most of the people evicted were minors, the organization said.

A total of 240 to 320 people were taken in shuttle buses directly to the border of the exclave on Sunday. There was never room in any of the official shelters for the people who have now lost their place to sleep in the camps in the Tarajal area, said Nolte Bauer, chairman of Mission Lifeline. “Bringing people to Morocco without trial undermines fundamental rights,” says Bauer. Ceuta shows “once again how European law is being systematically trampled on at the external border.”

At the summit on Friday in Brussels, Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker (ÖVP), among others, spoke out in favor of the rapid adoption of the “Asylum Emergency Framework Directive” for the EU. In cases like that of Ceuta, there must be the right not to have to accept asylum applications, he said.

The Greek government is also committed to creating the legal basis for this possibility. Greece had already suspended the individual examination of applications for protection twice in the past, most recently for three months in 2025 due to a sharp increase in the number of people who came from Libya by boat, especially to the islands of Crete and Gavdos. Human rights organizations have also proven in several cases illegal pushbacks of boat refugees into Libyan waters and even deaths caused by the Greek coast guard.

In addition, according to eyewitness reports, the Greek authorities, through their maneuvers and omissions, were largely responsible for the fishing vessel Adriana sinking in the Ionian Sea on June 14, 2023 with more than 700 refugees on board, of whom only 104 survived. Organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch accused Greece of blocking independent investigations into the case.

In Poland, the right to apply for international protection has been restricted at the border with Belarus since March 2025. Warsaw justifies this with the instrumentalization of migration by Belarus and the resulting threat to state security.

At the EU summit, the legalization of around 500,000 “irregular” migrants by the social democratic Spanish minority government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was once again criticized. Austria's Chancellor Christian Stocker (ÖVP) criticized that this did not send a good sign from Spain. Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen also criticized such measures without directly naming Spain.

Sánchez told journalists that other countries would also issue work permits to many migrants on a similar scale, even if they did not use the term legalization.

French President Emmanuel Macron warned against the dehumanization of refugees with a view to Ceuta. Ceuta was above all a “human drama”. Europe should not forget this as a “continent of humanists”.

Before the EU summit, 38 German organizations and associations called on the federal government to take action against further erosion of the right to asylum at EU level. The signatory organizations include the Paritätische Gesamtverband, Diakonie, Pro Asyl, Amnesty Deutschland, Oxfam and the sea rescue organizations Sea-Watch and Sea-Eye. “Anyone who allows the right to asylum to be suspended in supposedly exceptional situations is setting a dangerous precedent,” says the joint statement. "Today it's about the right to asylum - tomorrow other fundamental rights may be subject to reservations," warn the signatories.

The EU must not start treating its own fundamental rights “as fair-weather rights.” These are achievements and must be “preserved and defended, especially in challenging situations.” The answer to particularly stressful situations must be European solidarity and mutual support.

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