The final UK/EU renegotiation deal: legal status and legal effect

ORIGINAL PUBLISHED ON EU LAW ANALYSIS (Sunday, 21 February 2016)

by Steve Peers

Is the deal on renegotiation of the UK’s EU membership legally binding? If so, what does that mean exactly? In particular, is the deal ‘legally binding and irreversible’, as David Cameron had pledged? In part, that’s linked to the substance of the deal, which I have examined already in a post about the immigration (free movement) aspects. I will write later about the other aspects (sovereignty, Eurozone and competitiveness); and see also the analysis of the ‘red card’ for national parliaments by Katarzyna Granat here.

But in part it’s an issue about the very legal nature and legal nature of the deal itself. Some on the Leave said have already said that it’s not legally binding. So is it binding? And if so, what exactly is its legal effect in practice? I’ve addressed this already in an earlier post about the draft deal, but I’ll now update that analysis (recycling parts of it) to take account of the final deal.

The answer to those questions is complicated, because there are several different parts of the deal, taking different legal forms. For each part, the legal status depends on several different factors: when the text would be adopted; who would have to approve it; whether the EU courts have power to overturn it, and whether they are likely to do so; and whether the text could be repealed or amended in future. (I am assuming throughout that by ‘irreversible’, David Cameron meant irreversible without the UK’s consent).

This blog post looks first at the legal form of the agreement. Then I examine, based on prior experience, whether the EU can be ‘trusted’ to implement the draft deal. Finally, I provide, in one table, my assessment indication of the extent to which each of the parts of the draft deal are ‘legally binding and irreversible’, based on the factors mentioned above. (There’s a shinier version of this table on the ‘Full Facts’ website here).

Legal form of the main deal

The renegotiation deal takes the form of seven legal texts: a Decision of the EU Member States’ Heads of State and Government (the ‘draft Decision’); a Statement of the Heads of State and Government (which consists of a draft Council Decision); a Declaration by the European Council: and  four declarations by the Commission. Implicitly, it also includes three planned EU legislative proposals, all dealing with the free movement of EU citizens (the emergency brake on benefits, EU citizens’ non-EU family members and export of child benefit), which are referred to in these texts. The UK government will also table some domestic legislation linked to the renegotiation deal, but since those proposals have not appeared yet I won’t comment on them for now.

One important point before we continue: while the title of the deal refers to the UK only, none of the actual text of the deal applies solely to the UK. So it would apply to all Member States. That means it’s possible, for instance, that a proposal which the UK supports could be stymied by other Member States’ national parliaments (via the Council), using the new ‘red card’ for national parliaments objecting to EU proposals. It is possible, however, that the UK would be the only Member State aiming to implement some parts of the renegotiation deal, in particular the ‘emergency brake’ on benefits; and of course some of the existing opt-outs referred to in the deal only apply to the UK and one or two other Member States.

Let’s begin with the easiest parts of the deal (legally speaking): the planned EU legislation. We know the legal effect of EU legislation, once it’s adopted: it’s binding and directly applicable (in the case of the two planned Regulations on in-work benefits and child benefit exports), or binding as to the result to be achieved, leaving national authorities the choice of form and methods (in the case of the planned Directive on EU citizens’ non-EU family members). (See the definitions of EU legislation set out in Article 288 TFEU). The more difficult question here is the process. Can it be guaranteed that the proposals will: (a) be made; (b) be adopted; (c) not be struck down by the EU Court of Justice (CJEU); and (d) not revoked?

It’s up to the Commission to make proposals. The main Decision of Member States can’t bind the Commission (more on that below), but the deal includes three declarations by the Commission, announcing its intention to make these proposals. For those proposals to be adopted, they must be approved by the Council (by a qualified majority of Member States) and the European Parliament (by a majority of the vote, under most variants of the EU legislative process). Again, the Decision of Member States doesn’t bind the Council or the European Parliament. But the Council is made up of Member States’ ministers, and in the renegotiation deal the Member States commit themselves to supporting two of these three proposals (on child benefit and the emergency brake). It’s odd that there’s no parallel commitment as regards the third proposal (on EU citizens’ non-EU family members). The timing of these measures depends on how soon they would be adopted, although the Commission declares that it will table them after a ‘Remain’ vote, if there is one.

The renegotiation deal foresees that the new EU law creating an ‘emergency brake’ for EU workers’ in-work benefits would subsequently have to be implemented following a UK request to use it. It’s a bit vague about the exact details of this process, to avoid irritating the European Parliament, but it’s clear that the Council would decide on the UK application. The voting rule isn’t specified, but it would be legally dubious if the vote had to be unanimous on this (because it concerns an issue on which vetoes don’t apply). A Commission declaration states that the Commission is willing to make this implementing proposal; but there is no commitment from the Member States to support it. The timing would follow the adoption of the legislation on this topic: it would likely take at least one month for the UK’s request to be approved.

So the real question is whether to trust the Commission and Council (ie the Member States); although it’s also notable that the Member States haven’t committed themselves to support all aspects of the deal in this area, but only some of it. I’ll return to that question of trust below, as regards the deal in general. But it doesn’t even arise as regards the European Parliament (EP) or the CJEU, as they are not bound by the deal. It remains to be seen whether the EP will object to some or all of the legislative plans (this might become clearer closer to the referendum date). The position of the CJEU would only be clear if a legal challenge reached it. That would most likely follow from a challenge by an individual to the implementation of the new legislation, after it’s adopted, via the national courts. So it would be some years away. I have discussed the possible challenges to the legality of the planned changes on free movement law in my separate post on those issues. For a summary of this analysis, see the table below.

Leaving aside the question of Court challenges, could the legislation be revoked or amended, after it was adopted? In principle, that is possible, using the same legislative procedure: proposal from the Commission, qualified majority in the Council, and support from the EP. So the UK could not veto this taking place. But implicitly the Commission’s commitment to make these proposals, and Member States’ commitment to support at least two of them, suggest this is not going to happen. Again, this comes back to a question of trust.

The renegotiation deal also refers to Commission plans to issue ‘guidance’ on aspects of EU free movement law. This concerns part of the rules on EU citizens’ non-EU family members (part of those rules would be covered by a new law). There would also be ‘guidance’ on the issue of criminality of EU citizens. For the latter point, the Commission’s declaration states that it will ‘examine the threshold’ relating to expulsion of criminal EU citizens when the EU citizens’ Directive is revised in future. This is too imprecise to regard as a commitment.

Next, the draft Council decision on Eurozone governance. This measure can be adopted by the Council itself, as part of its powers to govern its own activity. It does not need to be proposed by the Commission, or agreed by the European Parliament. It is similar to an existing Council decision, which provides for delays in the vote if a sufficient number of Member States have qualms about them. Protocol 9 to the Treaties says that any changes to such rules must be discussed by consensus; arguably that means that the Decision could not be amended or repealed without the UK’s consent. However, it’s not clear if Protocol 9 applies to the decision on Eurozone governance. Since the draft Decision would not amend the rules of the Treaty on the adoption of legislation, but only provide for a delayed vote, it seems very unlikely that the CJEU would annul it.

In fact, it’s not even clear who would challenge it: the Member States support it as part of the deal; there seems little reason why an individual would challenge it in the national courts; and it would be hard for an individual to find a procedural route to challenge it in the courts anyway (the CJEU has ruled that procedural rules of the Council don’t give rise to individual rights). That only leaves the European Parliament, and this Decision doesn’t appear to be at the top of their concerns about the deal. Finally, as for timing, the renegotiation deal provides that the Decision will be adopted once a ‘Remain’ vote is notified (if there is one), with no further action necessary. The deal also provides for a Treaty amendment in future on this point; more on that below.

Finally, the main part of the renegotiation deal: the Decision of Heads of State and Government. It takes the form of five sections, dealing first of all with the UK’s four main negotiating objectives: the Eurozone (section A); competitiveness (section B); sovereignty (section C); and EU free movement (section D). Section E includes rules on dispute settlement and entry into force.

First of all, it should be noted that the Decision is not EU law as such; it’s international law. It’s often described as a proposed act of the European Council, which is the EU institution consisting of Heads of State and Government. But that’s simply not correct: it’s an act of the Heads of State and Government as such, not the European Council (or any other EU institution). That distinction might sound like hair-splitting to non-lawyers, but it has practical legal consequences.

While the Decision is not described as a treaty, it could be regarded as a ‘treaty in simplified form’ (see the broad definition of a treaty in Article 2(1)(a) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties). Certainly the UK government is going to register it as an international treaty (see Articles 77-80 of that Convention). This form of legal act is not new to the EU: it was used in 1992, to encourage Danes to ratify the Maastricht Treaty, and in 2008, to encourage Irish people to ratify the Lisbon Treaty.

What are the distinctions between this Decision and EU law? First of all, while the Decision is binding (as confirmed by the conclusions of the European Council), since binding effect inherently follows from its status as a treaty, it is binding under international law, not EU law. Secondly, the Decision does not as such change EU law, although other elements of the overall deal would, when implemented: the planned legislation on free movement issues, and the Council Decision on Eurozone issues. The Decision also contains rules on the application of EU law in practice (namely, Member States’ voting in Council after a ‘red card’ is issued by national parliaments) and a commitment to amend the Treaties in future, as regards the Eurozone governance and the exemption of the UK from ‘ever closer union’.

Indeed, the Decision could not have changed EU law as such, without following the formal procedures to that effect set out in EU law itself. I discussed the issue of amending EU secondary law above, but the same is true of EU primary law (the Treaties). The prior Decisions relating to Denmark and Ireland did not change the EU Treaties, and they could not, because the CJEU had ruled that the Treaties could only be amended using the procedure set out within them, in the Defrenne II judgment. Like the prior decisions, the Decision specifies that it does not amend EU as such, but interprets it. This is consistent with CJEU case law, which accepted in the Rottmann judgment that the previous Decision on Denmark could be used to interpret EU law.

However, the Decision does include legal obligations for Member States as a matter of international law; this is fine as long as the particular obligations don’t conflict with EU law. In the event of any conflict, the primacy of EU law means that the latter takes precedence over the renegotiation Decision. But is there any conflict? This is a substantive question, and in any event where the renegotiation Decision calls for EU secondary law measures to be adopted (the free movement legislation, the Eurozone Decision) the real question is whether those measures wouldthemselves breach the Treaties if adopted. I will examine whether there is any conflict with the Treaties as regards competitiveness and sovereignty in a subsequent post, but I will comment on one here: the commitment of Member States to block Council decision-making if a ‘red card’ is pulled by national parliaments, on the condition that national parliaments’ concerns are not addressed.

Andrew Duff has argued that this breaches EU law, because it infringes the powers of the European Parliament in decision-making. In my view, this is incorrect. A decision by the Council to stop discussing proposed EU legislation does not alter the Parliament’s role. It’s always open to the Council to stop discussing proposed legislation if there is insufficient interest in a proposal or for any other reason, and it’s not rare for it to do so. Every year, the Commission withdraws proposals because it has given up hope that the Council will ever agree to them (for the most recent such decision, see here). The EP can block proposed legislation too, where the ‘ordinary legislative procedure’ applies; it just does so less frequently than the Council.

A subtler argument is that this clause in the Decision in effect amends the Treaty (and so is therefore inapplicable due to the conflict with EU law) because it introduces a new voting rule in the Council without amending the Treaty to that effect. It’s more problematic than the new rule on delaying Council voting as regards Eurozone issues, since that latter rule doesn’t block the adoption of a proposal, and follows an existing secondary law precedent. However, as with a comparable clause in the ‘fiscal compact’ treaty, an agreement by Member States to coordinate their voting in Council does not amend the Treaties, whether it takes the form of an informal agreement (as it more often does) or a formal treaty to that effect. Even if this rule did breach EU law, how could the primacy of EU law beenforced in this context anyway? By a national court, or the CJEU, telling a Member State to vote a way it didn’t want to vote in the Council? This would be an unprecedented incursion into the relationship between national governments and national parliaments, which the Treaties recognise (in the Protocol on national parliaments) is a matter for national law alone to regulate.

As for the Treaty amendment process, it’s correct to say (as Andrew Duff does) that that the Treaty gives a role to the Commission and EP. But let’s not overstate that role: neither of them can block Treaty amendments, in most cases. The only exception is Treaty amendments which solely concern more majority voting, or more powers for the EP. But the renegotiation deal does not call for either of that special sort of Treaty amendment, but (implicitly) for the usual procedure to amend the Treaties.

Otherwise, the EP’s sole power is to insist that there has to be a fully-fledged ‘Convention’, with delegates from the EU institutions, national parliaments and national governments, to discuss proposed Treaty amendments. But the EP can’t set the agenda for the Convention, or determine its outcome. Anyway, that outcome is not binding upon the Member States, which then hold an Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC) to negotiate the final text – which the EP cannot reject. The result of that Convention will probably influence the outcome of the IGC, but doesn’t bind it.

What would actually happen, if a ‘Convention’ is established? The last Convention, in 2002-3, had a broad agenda, and in practice the EP was able to steer it toward a highly integrationist conclusion. But any Convention convened in (say) 2017 would now include a lot more national parliamentarians critical of the EU, from every perspective. They might well want to drive the Convention towards a stronger version of the ‘red card’ for national parliaments, as well as repatriation of powers from the EU. Anyway, the wording of the Treaty suggests that the agenda of the Convention is limited to the issues originally tabled for Treaty amendment.

So the real impediment to Treaty amendments is not at the EU level. Rather, it’s the risk of rejection in national parliaments (and occasionally referendums), with a further long-stop risk of rejection by national constitutional courts. It’s impossible to guess at this point what would happen to the Treaty amendments foreseen by the renegotiation Decision at national level. So there is no legal certainty that those Treaty amendments would definitely be approved.

On the other hand, the renegotiation Decision itself does not need national parliamentary approval, at least as a matter of EU law (whether some Member States’ law might require it is a separate question). Nor does it need any sort of approval from any of the EU’s institutions – although the planned legislation referred to in the Decision does, of course, need those institutions’ involvement. Since it’s not part of EU law, the validity of the renegotiation Decision could not be challenged directly before the CJEU, although it is possible that a national court could ask whether national implementation of EU based on the renegotiation Decision was in conflict with EU law.

As for the timing, the renegotiation Decision was apparently already formally adopted on 19 February. The text of Section E of the Decision says it will come into force automatically as soon as a ‘Remain’ vote (if there is one) is notified. The Decision is irreversible in the sense that the UK government has to consent to amend it or repeal it; this is explicitly confirmed by the European Council conclusions. There is no provision for a Member State to denounce it, or any other indication that it’s possible to do so; therefore it is subject to the general rule in Article 56 of the Vienna Convention that a treaty cannot be denounced in the absence of a clause to that effect.

However, the distinction between the renegotiation Decision and EU law does mean that there is a gap in the Decision’s enforceability. Section E of the Decision refers to bringing a dispute between Member States about the application of the Decision before the European Council. But unlike the fiscal compact Treaty, there is no provision on bringing a dispute before the CJEU, which could then impose fines. So despite the binding nature of the renegotiation Decision, there is no clear mechanism for making it stick. This brings us back to the issue of trust, discussed further below.

Finally, some commentators on my previous blog posts on this issue raised the question of whether Heads of State and Government could still act outside the framework of the EU Treaties, given that the Treaty of Lisbon upgraded the status of the EU institution in which they meet – the European Council. In my view, that change in EU law did not transfer the capacity of Heads of State and Government to act to the European Council, except where the Treaty amendments did that expressly (for instance, as regards appointments to the European Central Bank). This follows from the principle of ‘conferred powers’ set out in the Treaties: in the absence of any power for the European Council to adopt anything like the renegotiation Decision, it couldn’t have adopted it.

Can the EU be trusted?

As noted already, the EU has agreed Decisions like the renegotiation Decision twice before, as regards Ireland and Denmark. In those Decisions, the EU promised a Treaty amendment to Ireland, and delivered it in the form of a protocol several years later. It didn’t expressly promise a Treaty amendment to Denmark, but delivered one anyway, as part of the Treaty of Amsterdam (another Protocol, attached to the Treaties, which has since been amended). It’s sometimes suggested that the EU tricked Denmark because the CJEU later ignored the Danish opt-out of EU citizenship. But this is a myth: the fact is that Denmark never opted out of EU citizenship. The 1992 Decision on Denmark simply contained clarifications relating to the meaning of EU citizenship (see Section A of that decision), not any form of opt-out.

Another Treaty amendment (in the form of a protocol), relating to the legal effect of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, was promised to the Czech Republic if it ratified the Treaty of Lisbon. In this case, there was no Decision of Member States’ Heads of State and Government, but the draft Protocol and the promise were set out in conclusions of the European Council. The Protocol was subsequently formally proposed, but it was not pursued after a new Czech governmentwithdrew the previous government’s request. It’s possible that the Czech government decision was influenced by the European Parliament, which had voted against the draft Protocol. But as noted above, the EP does not have a veto over Treaty amendments: indeed, even after the EP’s objection, the Council recommended that the Treaty amendment process get underway.

The most the EP can do to stop Treaty amendments is to demand that a ‘Convention’ be established to discuss them. But remember: the Convention process does not give the EP any kind of veto over a Treaty amendment either. Ultimately a subsequent Inter-Governmental Conference decides what the final text of those Treaty amendments will be. So if the Czech government had really wanted to insist upon the adoption of its Protocol, it would have got it in the end.

For those who really don’t trust the EU to deliver on the renegotiation package, there’s always one further option. The UK government could commit itself, perhaps in the form of an Act of Parliament addressing the renegotiation deal, that it will report regularly on the implementation of that deal. If the key aspects of the deal are not in fact implemented for any reason, and there is no prospect that they will be, it would, as I’ve argued before, be reasonable to argue for another referendum.

Overview: is the renegotiation deal legally secure?

It follows from the above that the renegotiation deal is binding – and anyone who says otherwise (without clarification) is just not telling the truth. But there are two significant caveats to that: (a) parts of the deal, concerning the details of the changes to free movement law and Treaty amendments, still have to be implemented separately; and (b) there are limits to the enforceability of the deal.

The following table lists the binding elements of the renegotiation deal and summarises how enforceable they are and whether they need further implementation (and if so, what exactly this entails).

Decision of Heads of State and Government (in general)

Binding: in international law

In effect: after Remain vote notified

Further approval needed: No, unless national law requires parliamentary approval in some States

CJEU vulnerability: Zero; although CJEU might disagree with some interpretations of EU law

Reversible without UK consent: No

Commitment to amend treaty

Binding: in international law

In force: after Remain vote notified

Further approval needed: Yes, from national parliaments and possibly electorates; Commission, European Parliament have non-binding role in Treaty revision

CJEU vulnerability: Zero; although challenges under national constitutions are possible

Reversible without UK consent: No

Commitment to apply ‘red card’ for national parliaments

Binding: in international law

In force: after Remain vote notified

Further approval needed: No

CJEU vulnerability: Low

Reversible without UK consent: No

Council Decision on voting on financial issues

Binding: in EU law

In force: after adoption of this Decision, on date that Remain vote is notified

Further approval needed: Council has to adopt; no role for any other EU institution or national parliaments

CJEU vulnerability: low

Reversible without UK consent: No (arguably)

Legislation on free movement issues (3 measures)

Binding: in EU law

In force: after proposals tabled and adopted, which is due after Remain vote is notified

Further approval needed: Yes. Commission proposals (political commitment to make them); Council approval (political commitment from Member States to support 2 proposals); European Parliament (position unknown)

CJEU vulnerability: Low-medium for 2 proposals (family members, child benefit); High for emergency brake

Reversible without UK consent: Yes

Photo credit: http://www.leftfootforward.org

The final UK renegotiation deal: immigration issues

MY COMMENTS : Steve PEERS contribution is, as always, focused, and legally outstanding. It is interesting to note that in case of positive result of the UK referendum  it will be up to the EP to decide if, to preserve the UK “special” status, substantial amendments to the EU legislation on freedom of movement should be adopted. However what is at stake is the principle of non discrimination between EU citizens as defined by art. 9 of the TEU according to which “..In all its activities, the Union shall observe the principle of the equality of its citizens, who shall receive equal attention from its institutions, bodies, offices and agencies.”  

I do believe that in a “political” Union, worth its name and its former ambitions,  this should the objective of the negotiations  should had been to delete the existing protocols granting special status to some Countries and (their national Citizens) who become more “equal” than the others EU citizens.. However thanks to Mr Cameron it is now abundantly clear that our EU leaders are no more “Dwarfs on giant’s shoulders” but only short sighted political dwarfs… What is even more troubling is that, if the UK which has been for more than 40 years consistent with its initial position, other EU Countries, rhetoric statements taken apart,  have a much more ambiguous position towards the EU ( see France, Polonia, Hungary, Sweden, Finland and even Italy) and behave in a way incompatible with the idea of being part of the same family.

Emilio DE CAPITANI

 

ORIGINAL PUBLISHED ON EU LAW ANALYSIS (Saturday, 20 February 2016)

by Steve Peers*

So David Cameron has achieved his deal on the renegotiation of the UK’s EU membership (full text of that deal here). This is the first of a series of posts on the final deal – starting with the issue of ‘EU immigration’ (or, from the EU law point of view, the free movement of EU citizens). This builds on (and partly recycles) myearlier post on the EU immigration issues in the draft deal.

I will write later about the other substantive issues (competitiveness, Eurozone relations, sovereignty) and on the legal form of the deal (although see already my post on the legal form of the draft deal; my comments there won’t change much when I update them in light of the final deal). And see also Katarzyna Granat’s analysis of the ‘red card’ for national parliaments – again, the final text of the deal doesn’t differ from the draft here).

The deal takes the form of seven legal texts: a Decision of the EU Member States’ Heads of State and Government (the ‘Decision’); a Statement of the Heads of State and Government (which consists of an agreed Council Decision); aDeclaration by the European Council (which consists of the EU Member States’ Heads of State and Government, although when acting collectively they are legally distinct from the European Council): and four declarations by the Commission. Of these, Section D of the draft Decision and three of the Commission declarations relate to immigration issues. One of these Commission declarations (relating to child benefit exports) was added during the negotiation, while the text of Section D and another declaration (on the ‘emergency brake’ in in-work benefits) was amended. The other declaration (on so-called ‘abuse’ of free movement) was not changed.

While Section D contains some important attempts to clarify EU free movement law, the key feature of the deal on immigration is the intention to propose amendments to the three main current EU laws. These three laws are: (a) the EU citizens’ Directive, which sets out the main rules on most EU citizens moving to other Member States: (b) the EU Regulation on free movement of workers, which contains some specific rules on workers who move; and (c) the Regulation on social security, which sets out rules on coordination and equal treatment in social security for those who move between Member States.

All three sets of amendments are to be proposed by the Commission as soon as the main Decision enters into effect. That will happen (see Section E of the Decision) as soon as the UK announces that it will remain a member of the EU – if, of course, the UK public vote to remain in the upcoming referendum. The deal includes a commitment from the Commission to make these proposals, and from the other Member States to support their adoption in the EU Council (oddly, the latter commitment does not apply to the planned amendment to the citizens’ Directive, since that proposal is not referred to in the main Decision).

However, all three proposals will be subject to the ‘ordinary legislative procedure’, meaning that they have to be agreed with the European Parliament. It is also possible that their legality would be challenged before the EU Court of Justice. I can’t appraise the political likelihood of the European Parliament approving the proposals, although the largest party (the European People’s Party, made up essentially of centre-right parties like Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats) hasannounced that it supports the renegotiation deal in principle, subject to examination of the details. However, I offer some thoughts below about possible challenges to the legality of these laws if they are adopted.

Unlike some other parts of the deal (on the position of non-Eurozone states, and the exemption of the UK from ‘ever closer union’), there is no mention of future Treaty amendments to give effect to any part of the text dealing with free movement (immigration) issues. So the main impact of the deal in this area will come from the three legislative proposals, once adopted. Since those proposals will not be tabled or agreed until after the UK ‘Remain’ vote (if there is one), this means that the analysis of the details is necessarily somewhat speculative. There are some important points of detail that will only be clear once the legislation is proposed and approved. I flag up some of those finer points below.

Although the press discussion has focussed on the ‘emergency brake’ in in-work benefits, there are three categories of issues: benefits (including a couple of points besides that emergency brake); the family members of non-EU citizens; and EU citizens who commit criminal offences. I refer back to Cameron’s November 2014 speech on EU immigration issues (which I analysed here) where relevant.

It should be noted that there is no text in the deal on two of the issues which Cameron had raised: removal of job-seekers if they do not find a job within six months, and a requirement to have a job offer before entry. Both these changes would have required a Treaty amendment, in light of the Antonissen judgment of the CJEU.

Benefits

There are three benefits issues in the draft deal: (a) the ‘emergency brake’ for in-work benefits; (b) the export of child benefit; and (c) benefits for those out of work.

‘Emergency brake’ on in-work benefits

Cameron had called for no access to tax credits, housing benefits and social housing for four years for EU citizens, but later signalled his willingness to compromise on this point. The position of non-workers and job-seekers is discussed below; but the position of workers is legally and politically difficult, since the Treaty guarantees them non-discrimination.

In the end, the deal provides not for permanent discrimination on this issue, but temporary discrimination on the basis of an ‘emergency brake’. The Commission will propose legislation on this issue, which will provide that the UK (or other Member States) can apply a four-year ban on in-work benefits, subject to substantive and procedural criteria. Procedurally, the rules will say that a Member State will apply to the Council to authorise the ban. The Council will presumably act by the default voting rule in the Treaties: a qualified majority on a proposal from the Commission. That means no single Member State can veto the request to pull the brake. The final deal leaves vague the exact authorisation process which will apply in the Council, to avoid annoying the European Parliament (EP); but that detail will have to be addressed sooner or later. Certainly the EP will have to approve the legislation which sets up that process in the first place; the question is whether it would have a role deciding if the brake should be pulled.

A Commission declaration states the UK qualifies to pull this ban immediately, in particular because it did not apply transitional controls to workers from new Member States in 2004. However, there is nothing in the deal to suggest that Member States – who would have the final word – also agree. The restrictions would only to those who were ‘newly arriving for a period of seven years’, and would have to be phased out during that time. Again, the seven years matches the transitional period which the UK could have applied to control the numbers of workers from new Member States, back in 2004.

Several points of detail arise. First of all, after the seven years have expired, it’s not clear how much time would then have to pass before the brake could be applied again. Secondly, it will be important to clarify the meaning of those who are ‘newly arriving’. What about those who lived in the UK before, and are now returning here? How much time would they have had to spend in Poland (say) before they are considered ‘newly arriving’ again? Presumably the brake would not apply to those who are already here when the brake is pulled, but are not working at that time (due to youth, unemployment, childcare or illness) but who get work afterward.

Thirdly, it will be necessary to define how to calculate the four year period. It’s easy enough to apply it to those who begin work as soon as they (newly) arrive in the country, and who work for the full four years afterward. But what about those (a non-working spouse, or a teenager, for instance) who start work some time after they enter the country? What about those who start work, stop for whatever reason and then restart? What about those who start work during the brake period, then spend a year or so in Poland, then come back? And how can we be sure when exactly someone entered the country in the first place?

The final crucial point of detail is, obviously, the grounds on which the brake can be applied. According to the Decision, it would apply where:

‘an exceptional situation exists on a scale that affects essential aspects of [a Member State’s] social security system, including the primary purpose of its in-work benefits system, or which leads to difficulties which are serious and liable to persist in its employment market or are putting an excessive pressure on the proper functioning of its public services’.

There’s certainly a widespread perception that one of more of these problems exist in the UK and are caused by the large increase in the number of workers from other Member States in recent years. However, there are two serious problems with the proposed mechanism. Firstly, as Jonathan Portes has argued, objective evidence for this view is lacking. Secondly, while the CJEU has been willing to accept certain limits to free movement rights on the grounds of protecting health systems (see myprior blog post for details), this would have a much more far-reaching impact on non-discrimination for workers. It’s certainly conceivable that by analogy from the Court’s obvious willingness to keep EU monetary union afloat, along with its endorsement of restrictions for non-workers in recent years (see below), it mightaccept that these plans do not violate the Treaties. But as EU law currently stands, that is probably a long shot.

Export of child benefit

Cameron sought to end payment of child benefit to children living in other Member States. This payment is provided for in the EU social security coordination Regulation, which would have to be amended to change those rules. There was a strong argument that the plan would have breached the Treaties, since in the case ofPinna the CJEU struck down EU legislation that allowed Member States not to export such benefits at all as a breach of the rules on free movement of workers.

The deal does not go as far as Cameron wanted: instead child benefit can be limited by indexing it to the ‘conditions’ in the receiving State. This will only apply to ‘new claims made by EU workers in the host Member State’; but after 1 January 2020, this ‘may’ be extended to ‘existing claims already exported by EU workers’. This is clarified by the Commission declaration, which states that the ‘conditions’ refers to the ‘standard of living and level of child benefits’ in the child’s State of residence. The transitional rule, and the Commission declaration, were added during negotiations. It’s an open question whether this new law would breach the Treaties, since there is no case law on the point.

Several points of detail arise here. It’s explicit that the new rules will be optional, so Member States can still be more generous if they want to. There’s nothing to limit their application to the UK (although I will refer to the UK and Poland here, purely for the sake of readability). It’s not clear whether the rules will also apply to Britishcitizens who have children in other Member States; arguably the principle of non-discrimination will require that they do. It’s also not clear what happens to ‘mixed’ families of (say) British and Polish parents (or indeed step-parents). Will it depend on which parent is the worker? What if both are workers? What if that changes over time?

The transitional clause also raises issues. The Decision distinguishes between ‘new claims’ and ‘existing claims already exported by EU workers’. Presumably the new law will state a precise date at which claims can be regarded as ‘existing’ (say 1 January 2017). These must be existing exported claims, so if a child moves to Poland after 1 January 2017, or is born after that date and resides in Poland, then child benefits could be reduced, even if the worker is already in the UK. So if my estimated date is correct, anyone who is thinking about having a child, and who wants to avoid the application of these rules, had better get a move on. Perhaps this Easter will be the season of fertility even more than usual.

Finally, it should be noted that a challenge by the Commission to other aspects of UK payment of child benefit to EU citizens is still pending. The non-binding opinion of an Advocate-General argues in favour of the UK in this case (for a critical view, see Charlotte O’Brien’s analysis here). It wouldn’t surprise me if the Commission quietly withdrew this legal challenge. You read that here first.

Benefits for those out of work

Cameron sought to end social assistance for job-seekers. The EU legislation already rules out social assistance for job-seekers, so this reflects the status quo. Although the CJEU has said that job-seekers have a right to access benefits linked to labour market participation, if they have a link already with the labour market in question, it took a narrow view of this rule in the judgment in Alimanovic. Pure benefit tourists (who have never had work in the host State) are not entitled to benefits, according to the judgment in Dano. So the Decision simply reiterates this case law, which has already satisfied Cameron’s main objectives in this field. It should be noted that another judgment by the Court of Justice on EU benefits issues is due next week.

EU citizens’ family members

Under the EU citizens’ Directive, currently EU citizens can bring with them to another Member State their spouse or partner, the children of both (or either) who are under 21 or dependent, and the dependent parents of either. This applies regardless of whether the family members are EU citizens or not. No further conditions are possible, besides the prospect of a refusal of entry (or subsequent expulsion) on grounds of public policy, public security or public health (on which, see below).

In principle EU law does not apply to UK citizens who wish to bring non-EU family members to the UK, so the UK is free to put in place restrictive rules in those cases (which it has done, as regards income requirements and language rules). However, the CJEU has ruled that UK citizens can move to another Member State (the ‘host Member State’) and be joined by non-EU family members there, under the more generous rules in the EU legislation. Then they can move back to the UK (the ‘home Member State’) with their family members, now invoking the free movement rights in the Treaties. This is known in practice (in the UK) as the ‘Surinder Singh route’, because of the name of the case which first established this principle. In 2014, the CJEU clarified two points about this scenario (as discussed by Chiara Berneri here): (a) it was necessary to spend at least three months in the host Member State exercising EU law rights and residing with the family member, before coming back; and (b) the EU citizens’ Directive applied by analogy to govern the situation of UK citizens who return with their family members.

In his 2014 speech, David Cameron announced his desire to end all distinction between EU citizens and UK citizens as regards admission of non-EU family members, by allowing the UK to impose upon the EU citizens the same strict conditions that apply to UK citizens. Since this would have deterred the free movement of those EU citizens who have non-EU family members, there is a good chance that it would have required not just a legislative amendment but a Treaty change.  (Note that according to the CJEU, EU free movement law does not just require the abolition of discrimination between UK and other EU citizens, but also the abolition of non-discriminatory ‘obstacles’ to free movement).

However, the deal does not go this far. The main Decision states that:

‘In accordance with Union law, Member States are able to take action to prevent abuse of rights or fraud, such as the presentation of forged documents, and address cases of contracting or maintaining of marriages of convenience with third country nationals for the purpose of making use of free movement as a route for regularising unlawful stay in a Member State or for bypassing national immigration rules applying to third country nationals.’

The Commission Declaration then states that it will make a proposal to amend the citizens’ Directive:

‘to exclude, from the scope of free movement rights, third country nationals who had no prior lawful residence in a Member State before marrying a Union citizen or who marry a Union citizen only after the Union citizen has established residence in the host Member State. Accordingly, in such cases, the host Member State’s immigration law will apply to the third country national.’

That Declaration also states that the Commission will clarify that:

‘Member States can address specific cases of abuse of free movement rights by Union citizens returning to their Member State of nationality with a non-EU family member where residence in the host Member State has not been sufficiently genuine to create or strengthen family life and had the purpose of evading the application of national immigration rules’; and

‘The concept of marriage of convenience – which is not protected under Union law – also covers a marriage which is maintained for the purpose of enjoying a right of residence by a family member who is not a national of a Member State.’

It seems clear that these ‘clarifications’ will not be included in the legislative proposal, since the declaration later concludes (emphasis added):

‘These clarifications will be developed in a Communication providing guidelines on the application of Union law on the free movement of Union citizens.’

Let’s examine the planned legislative amendments, then the guidelines which will provide ‘clarifications’. The amendments will exclude two separate categories of non-EU citizens from the scope of the citizens’ Directive: those who did not have prior lawful residence in a Member State before marrying an EU citizen who has moved to another Member State; and those who marry such an EU citizen after he or she has moved to a Member State. For these people, national immigration law will apply.

The background to this proposal is CJEU case law. In 2003, in the judgment inAkrich, the CJEU ruled that Member States could insist that non-EU family members had previously been lawfully resident in the Member State concerned (previously no such rule appeared to exist). But in 2008, in Metock, the CJEU overturned this ruling and said that a prior legal residence requirement was not allowed.

Several points arise. First, the basic definition: what is lawful residence exactly? Presumably it means more than lawful presence, ie a stay of three months on the basis of a valid visa or visa waiver. But what about ambiguous cases, such as a pending asylum application or appeal? EU legislation says that asylum-seekers can usually stay until the application fails (if it fails), and then during the appeal (subject to some big exceptions). According to the CJEU, the EU’s main rules on irregular migrants therefore don’t apply to asylum-seekers whose application is pending.

Secondly, it’s odd to refer to national law alone, since sometimes EU law governs the admission of non-EU nationals. Even the UK (along with Ireland) is bound by the first-phase EU asylum law, and by the EU/Turkey association agreement. Denmark is bound by the latter treaty. And all other Member States are bound by the second-phase asylum law, along with EU legislation on admission of students and researchers and some categories of labour migrants (the highly-skilled, seasonal workers and intra-corporate transferees).

Thirdly, it’s arguable that the EU principle of non-discrimination applies. That would mean, for instance, that if a German woman already in the UK married her American husband, the UK would have to treat her the same as a British woman in the same situation – but no worse. This would in fact be relevant to every Member State – there’s nothing in this part of the deal that limits its application to the UK. (One important point of detail is whether all Member States would be obliged to apply the new rules on ‘prior lawful residence’ and ‘marriage after entry of the EU citizen’, or whether they could choose to waive one or both of those rules. The EU citizens’ Directive already states that Member States can apply more liberal standards if they wish to).

Finally, the consequences of the rule will need to be clearer in the future legislative amendments. Does the exclusion from the scope of the Directive mean that the family member is excluded forever from the scope of the citizens’ Directive – even if the person concerned is admitted pursuant to national immigration law? That would mean that national immigration law (or EU immigration legislation, in some cases) would continue to govern issues such as the family member’s access to employment or benefits, or subsequent permanent residence. It’s also not clear what happen to children such as the step-child of the EU citizen, or a child that was born to the EU and non-EU citizen couple while living in a third country.

Could this legislative amendment violate the EU Treaties? In its judgment inMetock, the Court referred almost entirely to the wording of the citizens’ Directive. It mainly referred to the Treaties when concluding that the EU had the competenceto regulate the status of EU citizens’ third-country national family members. But it also referred to the Treaty objective of creating an ‘internal market’, as well as the ‘serious obstruct[ion]’ to the exercise of freedoms guaranteed by the Treaty, if EU citizens could not lead a ‘normal family life’. It must therefore be concluded that there is some possibility that the revised rules would be invalid for breach of EU free movement law.

Would the amendment violate the EU Charter right to family life? That’s unlikely. While the right to family life is often invoked to prevent expulsions of family members, the case law of the European Court of Human Rights gives great leeway to Member States to refuse admission of family members, on the grounds that the family could always live ‘elsewhere’ – as the CJEU has itself acknowledged (EP v Council). There is some possibility, though, that the CJEU would be reluctant to follow that case law (EP v Council concerns families entirely consisting of non-EU nationals) in the context of free movement: the idea that you could go away and enjoy your family life somewhere else is antithetical to the logic of free movement.

As for the ‘clarifications’ in future guidelines, they will of course not be binding. They first of all refer to cases where an EU citizen has moved to another Member State and come back to the home State. The definition of what constitutes a ‘sufficiently genuine’ move to another country is set out in the case law (three months’ stay with a family member) and mere guidelines cannot overturn this.

It should be noted that the Surinder Singh case law is in any event derived from theTreaty. This line of case law does not accept that such movement between Member States is an ‘evasion’ of national law – as long as free movement rights are genuinely exercised with a family member for a minimum time. The CJEU also usually assumes (see Metock, for instance) that a ‘marriage of convenience’ cannot apply to cases where there is a genuine relationship, even if an immigration advantage is gained. (The Commission has released guidelines already on the ‘marriage of convenience’ concept: see analysis by Alina Tryfonidou here).

Having said that, the planned legislative changes will complicate the plans of people who wish to move to another Member State with their non-EU family and then move back, since national immigration law will apply to their move to the hostMember State. It will be important to see how the legislative amendments address the transitional issues of people who have already moved to a host Member State before the new rules apply. Can the home Member State say, possibly based on the Commission’s ‘guidance’ (which might be issued before the new legislation is adopted) that those families must now obtain lawful residence in the host State for the non-EU family member, before the non-EU family member can come to the home State?

Criminality and free movement law

The Treaties allow for the refusal or entry or expulsion of EU citizens on ‘grounds of public policy, public security or public health’. The citizens’ Directive sets out detailed substantive and procedural rules on this issue, which has been the subject of considerable CJEU case law.

What does the renegotiation deal do? First of all, the Decision states that:

‘Member States may also take the necessary restrictive measures to protect themselves against individuals whose personal conduct is likely to represent a genuine and serious threat to public policy or security. In determining whether the conduct of an individual poses a present threat to public policy or security, Member States may take into account past conduct of the individual concerned and the threat may not always need to be imminent. Even in the absence of a previous criminal conviction, Member States may act on preventative grounds, so long as they are specific to the individual concerned.’

To this end, the Commission declaration states that it will:

‘also clarify that Member States may take into account past conduct of an individual in the determination of whether a Union citizen’s conduct poses a “present” threat to public policy or security. They may act on grounds of public policy or public security even in the absence of a previous criminal conviction on preventative grounds but specific to the individual concerned. The Commission will also clarify the notions of “serious grounds of public policy or public security” and “imperative grounds of public security” [grounds for expelling people who have resided for longer periods in a host Member State].  Moreover, on the occasion of a future revision of [the citizens’ Directive], the Commission will examine the thresholds to which these notions are connected.’

It’s not clear whether the revision of the Directive referred to at the end here is as imminent as the proposal to amend the rules to create a ‘prior lawful residence’ rule for non-EU family members. Otherwise the plan to issue guidelines is clearly not binding. The language in these guidelines partly reflects the existing law, but some features are new: the greater emphasis on past conduct, the lesser need to show that a threat is imminent and the possibility of expelling someone as a ‘preventative’ measure.

These changes fall within the scope of Cameron’s desire to have ‘stronger measures to deport EU criminals’. However, it should be noted that there is no specific reference to his plans for ‘tougher and longer re-entry bans for foreign rough sleepers, beggars and fraudsters’. While a conviction and re-entry ban for fraud might be covered by the guidelines referred to above, there’s no mention of clarifying entry bans as regards those guidelines, or changing the legislation on this issue. Also, as I noted in my comments on Cameron’s plans at the time, EU legislation does not allow for re-entry bans for rough sleepers and beggars, since the EU citizens’ Directive states unambiguously that a ban on entry cannot be imposed where a person was expelled for grounds other than public policy, public security and public health. Put simply, a Member State can impose an entry ban where an EU citizen has been expelled due to criminality – but not where he or she has been expelled due to poverty.

Longer waiting periods for free movement of persons from new Member States

Finally, it should be noted that the Decision briefly refers to Cameron’s plan to have longer waiting periods for free movement of persons in future accession treaties. It does not incorporate his suggestion, but merely notes it. However, since the details of each new Member State’s adaptation to EU law are set out in each accession treaty, which has to be approved by each Member State, the UK can simply veto any future accession treaties unless longer waiting periods for free movement are indeed included. The next accession to the EU is at least four years away, probably more. So nothing really turns on the absence of agreement with the UK’s position for now.

Conclusion

The key point to remember about the renegotiation deal, particularly as regards EU immigration, is that it consists of different parts. The main deal takes the form of a Decision, which essentially clarifies EU law without amending it. According to CJEU case law (Rottmann), the Court is willing to take Decisions like these into account when interpreting EU law.

However, in the area of EU immigration, the other parts of the deal are more relevant: the intention to pass three new EU secondary laws. Those new laws will be a fully-fledged amendment to existing EU rules, not simply a clarification of it. While some points of detail remain to be worked out, it is clear from the deal that the Commission will make proposals in these areas, and all Member States (ie the Council) will support them. It remains to be seen whether the European Parliament will approve them, and whether the CJEU would accept challenges to their legality. My assessment of the Court’s likely response, as detailed above, is that the amendments on family members will probably be acceptable; the child benefit reforms are an open question; and the changes on in-work benefits are highly vulnerable. Of course, there’s no prior case law on these specific issues, and so we can’t be certain of the Court’s approach in advance.

Overall, as I concluded in the earlier post on the draft agreement, these changes, if they are all implemented as planned, will fall short of a fundamental change in the UK’s relationship with the EU. But equally it is clearly wrong to say that they mean nothing – if in fact they are implemented. The changes would be modest but significant: amendments to three key pieces of EU legislation that would for the first time roll back EU free movement law, not extend it. Leaving aside the calls for non-binding guidelines, there would be cutbacks in in-work benefits (albeit for a limited period), significantly more control on the admission of non-EU family members of EU citizens, and more limited export of child benefit.

Barnard & Peers: chapter 13

Photo credit: http://www.telegraph.co.uk
*Disclosure: I will be consulting for the European Parliament on the free movement aspects of the renegotiation. However, my advice will be fully independent; I don’t represent or advocate for the European Parliament (or anyone else) on these (or any other) issues.

Posted by Steve Peers at 01:35 15 comments:

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Labels: benefits, Brexit, child benefit, EU citizenship, EU referendum, EU reform, expulsion, family benefit, free movement of persons, tax credits, UK renegotiation

Thursday, 18 February 2016

Mutual trust – blind trust or general trust with exceptions? The CJEU hears key cases on the European Arrest Warrant

Henning Bang Fuglsang Madsen Sørensen, Associate Professor, Department of Law, University of Southern Denmark

Monday 15 February was a busy day in Luxembourg. The Court held a hearing in C-404/15, Aranyosi, which was lodged at the Court in July 2015. But the Court also received C-659/15, Caldararu, at 9 December 2015 under the ‘emergency’ PPU-procedure. The Court decided to join the two cases as they were submitted by the same court – Hanseatisches Oberlandesgericht in Bremen, Germany – and concerned the same issue – should surrender on a European Arrest Warrant be refused if there is reason to fear the wanted person will be exposed to inhumane prison conditions in the requesting state? So the hearing concerned both cases and it turned out to be a busy but also interesting day because the two cases touch upon the application of the principle of mutual recognition as the cornerstone of EU criminal law as recognized by recital 6 of the Framework Decision establishing the European Arrest Warrant.

During the day, the Court heard the submissions from the lawyers of Aranyosi and Caldararu, the referring judge from Bremen, 9 Member States (Germany, Ireland, Spain, France, Lithuania, Hungary, The Netherlands, Romania and UK) and of course the Commission.

But what was all the fuss about? Well, let us have a look at the two cases first. Then we will turn to the submissions of the Member States and the Commission.

The cases

Aranyosi is a young man, living with his parents in Bremen. He has a girlfriend in Germany, with whom he has a child. He was arrested in Bremen 14 January 2015 as Hungary had requested his surrender on a European Arrest Warrant. Aranyosi is suspected for two accounts of burglary. However, Aranyosi resisted the surrender, referring to reports from the Committee on the Prevention of Torture (CPT) and case law from the European Court of the Human Rights, which documented a massive over-crowding in Hungarian prisons to an extent that could be considered a violation of ECHR art. 3 (corresponding to Article 4 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights). The Bremen Court decided to ask the Luxembourg Court if it was possible to read article 1(3) of the EAW Framework Decision (the ‘human rights’ clause) as an opportunity to refuse the surrender in case of strong indications of detention conditions insufficient to satisfy ECHR art. 3. The Bremen Court also asked if it was possible to request assurances concerning the prison conditions from the requesting state before surrender was allowed. Due to Aranyosi’s connections with Bremen, the judge decided to release Aranyosi while the case was pending.

Caldararu is also a young man. He was sentenced to 8 months in prison by a court in Romania for driving without a driver’s license. The case was heard in absentia. However, Caldararu left Romania before the sentenced time could be served and Romania issued a European Arrest Warrant for Caldararu. He was arrested in Bremen, Germany, on 8 November 2015, and his surrender to Romania was then allowed on 20 November 2015. He refused however to consent to the surrender with reference to the detention conditions in Romania. The Bremen Court decided to keep Caldararu in custody as the Bremen Court also sent a request for a preliminary ruling in this case. The request was sent on 9 December 2015.

So, two cases from the same court, basically concerning the same question: Can a judge refuse surrender if it is feared that detention facilities in the requesting state are inadequate?

But the reply to these questions touches upon a number of arguments, and the day turned out to be very intense as these arguments involves fundamental rights, the principle of mutual recognition, the relationship between Member States and not least what to do if surrender is denied. The parties were far from a common understanding of how these arguments should be used, and the hearing turned out to be a very interesting and well-spent day in Luxembourg.

Let us have a look at some of the major arguments.

The first argument – mutual trust means blind trust!

One could argue that mutual trust means blind trust to such a degree that the executing Member State must execute the European Arrest Warrant without any checks for anything else other than the grounds for refusal to execute an EAW mentioned in Articles 3 and 4 of the Framework Decision (such as double jeopardy, or age of a child).

The Bremen judge of course opposed this view as this would make his request for a preliminary ruling obsolete.

Especially Spain supported this argument, saying that the evaluation of the protection of fundamental rights is a privilege for the court in the issuing State as the court in the executing State is not empowered to make abstract evaluations of the prison conditions in another Member State. The prior CJEU judgment inMelloni was mentioned as an example of a situation, where Spain was denied the possibility to make the surrender conditional upon specific guarantees. Spain had difficulties aligning the conclusions of Melloni with a possibility to make evaluations of foreign prison systems prior to deciding surrender and then perhaps condition the surrender on guarantees regarding detention conditions. Spain therefore held, that the executing State had to surrender unless Article 3 or 4 of the Framework Decision were applicable and it would then be for the courts of the requesting state to evaluate whether prison conditions would amount to a violation of ECHR art. 3 / Charter art. 4.

Lithuania presented a similar argument, arguing that the principle of mutual trust would fall apart if Member States were given the power to check each other in regard to prison conditions. Lithuania further referred to TEU art 7 (on the possible suspension of a Member State from the EU on human rights grounds) as the procedure prescribed by the treaties in case a Member State is found not to respect fundamental rights. Lithuania also expressed concern whether the issuing State would be able to make its arguments before the court in the executing State deemed the prison conditions in the issuing State insufficient in regards to fundamental rights, and it could lead to a situation where the issuing State would be denied the possibility to use the EAW as such. This would make it impossible to prosecute absconded criminals and would thus threaten the idea of AFSJ as such.

The remaining States together with the Commission were in opposition to Spain and Lithuania. The parties argued in general in favor of understanding mutual trust as a general trust in opposition to a blind trust. The Bremen judge reported his difficulties when reading about the prison conditions in Hungary, and how he had asked the German Government in vain to obtain guarantees concerning the prison conditions for Aranyosi. He argued that it would be unacceptable to demand that a judge should ignore obvious reasons to fear for violations of fundamental rights and the possibility of denying the execution of the EAW had to be present in such a situation. Being a judge himself, he called upon the Luxembourg judges not to put this burden on him.

The German Government along with Ireland, France, Hungary, The Netherlands, Romania, UK and the Commission presented various arguments in favor of understanding mutual trust as a general trust which only is rebuttable in very exceptional circumstances.

Germany argued that the executing state cannot be making assessments of the respect for fundamental rights in other Member States, except when under very exceptional circumstances. Such circumstances could be several reports from the Council of Europe, CPT, judgements from the ECtHR, reports from NGOs and even from the American Secretary of State. Germany further read recital 13 in the preamble together with art. 1(3) of the EU Framework Decision in such a way that a risk of violation of fundamental rights is a general reason for denying execution of the EAW in supplement to the specific reasons mentioned in Articles 3 and 4 of the law. Ireland supported this argument with a reference to recital 12, while Hungary supported the argument with reference to recital 10. The UK also argued in favor of reference also to recitals 5 and 6, together with recital 10, 12 and 13 and Article 1(2) and 1(3).

The Commission argued for the need of a balance between mutual trust and the protection of fundamental rights, requiring Member States to have a general trust in each other with a possibility to test the protection of fundamental rights if there seems to be a real risk for a violation of fundamental rights. The Commission found support for this in Art. 19(2) of the Charter (non-removal from a Member State to face torture et al), as the Commission supported the Bremen judge by finding it unacceptable to force a Member State to surrender to a known risk of violation of fundamental rights without taking action to protect fundamental rights. The Commission further stressed that if the principle of mutual recognition would prevail over the protection of fundamental rights, then a principle had been given more weight than fundamental rights. Fundamental rights, being a part of primary law and the reason for the Union as such, could not be set aside by a general principle within EU law.

When is the obligation to examine a potential risk triggered?

If detention facilities in the requesting Member State may be examined prior to the decision of surrender, then how much is needed for triggering such an examination?

The main question was whether an examination should be accepted only in case of systemic failures in the requesting state or whether an individual risk concerning the specific person should be enough. The first situation, where an examination only is acceptable in cases of systemic failures, correspond to the conclusions of the Luxembourg Court in the cases of N.S. (on the Dublin system in Greece). andMelloni, and also paragraphs 191-194 of Opinion 2/13 (on ECHR accession). The second situation corresponds to the conclusion of ECtHR in Soering (on extradition to ‘death row’ in the USA).

Germany, UK and The Netherlands argued in favor of the individual approach, exemplified by a person who may be kept under harsh detention conditions due to religion or sexual orientation. Ireland argued together with France, Romania and Hungary in favor of the systemic approach, and also stressing that the threshold that has to be met had to be set rather high in respect for the principle of mutual trust. Spain argued against both approaches, as Spain found the examination to be directed against the detention facilities of the requesting state and as such not covered by any of the terms. Lithuania referred to art 7 TEU as the correct method to handle suspicions concerning violation of fundamental rights in a Member State, and concluded on this basis that the examination conducted in the executing Member State should be limited to an examination of whether or not art. 7 had been activated in regards to the issuing Member State.

The Commission found it relevant to initiate an investigation if an individual risk were present.

The parties were thus split in half on the question of whether an examination was allowed only in case of systemic failures or whether the examination should be allowed based on the individual risk of the person wanted for surrender. The submissions of the Member States were however also influenced by the question of what to do if the examination leads to the conclusion of a present and relevant risk in case of surrender – should the requesting state be given the opportunity to eliminate the found risk through guarantees or should the surrender be conditioned upon guarantees? The position of the Member States on this issue will be reported below. First, we must turn our attention to how the Member States would examine a real and present danger of a violation of a fundamental right in case surrender is allowed.

How will the Member States examine a claimed risk of violation of fundamental rights?

The problem of how a court in one Member State can obtain information on the detention system in another Member State in order to establish whether or not these detention facilities may be seen as a violation of fundamental rights were also included in the submissions of the parties.

Germany referred to reports from the CPT and the Council of Europe, together with the case law of the ECtHR, reports from NGOs and even the American Secretary of State. Germany stressed that these sources had to be published within a reasonably short time before the national court was to decide on the question of surrender. The UK also supported the use of reports from international organs, the case law of the ECtHR, individual claims and testimonies and reports from national experts. Ireland and The Netherlands also argued for the use of reports from the CPT and the case law of the ECtHR, while France considered especially the case law of the ECtHR as relevant. Hungary elaborated on the fact that reports from the CPT are at least one year underway, while a judgement of the ECtHR refer to facts as they were at the time of the claimed violation. That could be several years prior to the judgement were handed down. These sources thus had to be used with great care.

Romania did not elaborate on the question of how to make an examination. Also Spain and Lithuania opposed the general idea of letting foreign courts examine domestic prison conditions, but did not elaborate on how this may be done in case the Luxembourg Court would allow it.

The Commission supported the use of the case law of ECtHR, reports from international organisations, statistics on the over-crowding of prisons in the requesting State and even any other relevant source. The Commission was thus in line with especially Germany and UK.


The importance of dialogue between Member States – the concept of guarantees

Several parties stressed the importance of dialogue between the requesting Member State and the executing Member States.

The Bremen judge, Germany and France argued in favour of giving the judge of the court in the executing Member State the possibility to call for guarantees from the issuing Member State. The guarantees would be able to remove the fear for a violation of fundamental rights, and the surrender should therefore be denied if the required guarantees were not provided.

Ireland and The Netherlands found no basis for refusing to surrender due to the lack of diplomatic guarantees. The executing Member State had to make its mind up whether or not there would be a real and present risk for a violation of fundamental rights and handle the request for surrender in accordance with this.

Spain argued against the use of guarantees, as the judge calling for the guarantees may be setting the criteria that has to be met before he or she will allow surrender. This would generate a risk of huge variations in the way the Member States use this possibility, and would therefore threaten the uniformity of Union Law. Lithuania also argued against the use of guarantees by elaborating on the fact that the guarantee is not worth much if the requesting Member State decides not to fulfill its obligations in accordance with the guarantee after the surrender has taken place.

Especially Hungary stressed the importance of Article 15(2) of the Framework Decision. If a Member State is afraid of surrendering due to the fear of violation of fundamental rights, then the two involved states must engage in a dialogue for the purpose of removing the reasons for this fear. Hungary saw the risk of violations as a specific and concrete problem, which could be handled with specific and concrete solutions. Such solutions could be alternative detention measures, a decision to keep the surrendered person in custody in another prison or perhaps show the executing court that the reasons are obsolete due to for instance the constructions of new prisons following e.g. a judgment from the ECtHR. This line of arguments was supported by the UK as well as Ireland and The Netherlands. These arguments were also supported by Romania by stating that the risk for a violation of fundamental rights may be real and present but nevertheless possible to eliminate in the specific case. The Commission also supported this view.

Especially Romania also raised another issue concerning equal treatment, as Romania mentioned that if certain inmates where kept under custody under more beneficial conditions due to guarantees while other inmates were kept in custody under normal conditions. Romania pointed to the simple fact that if prisoners with guarantees were to be given more space, then the remaining prisoners would have even less space. This motivated the referring judge to ask Romania, Germany and France to elaborate on this risk concerning unequal treatment. Romania found this risk to be non-acceptable, while France argued that the risk of unequal treatment were a less evil than the risk of violating fundamental rights. Germany stated, that Germany did not want unequal treatment, but appropriate prison conditions. The risk of unequal treatment was however the only way to respect the Soeringjudgment of the ECtHR.

Thus, there were different views on whether surrender could be conditioned upon guarantees or whether guarantees should be seen more as a dialogue comforting the executing judge in the removal of a risk of violation of fundamental rights. However, there seemed to be general consensus when it came to how guaranties should be issued, as the parties found this should be regulated in national law of the specific Member State.

The consequence of denying surrender

The last major issue touched upon by the parties was the question of what should happen if surrender were refused.

The Bremen judge explained how German law made it possible to let Germany continue the criminal proceedings if surrender was denied, but practical problems in regards to witnesses etc. made this theoretical possibility an illusion in real life. In regards to Aranyosi, a decision not to surrender would therefore in real life also be decision to discontinue the criminal proceedings. In regards to Caldararu, who was sentenced in Romania, a decision to not surrender could provide the basis for letting Caldararu serve the sentence in Germany, but this would also result in a number of practical problems as Caldararu only had stayed a very short time in Germany. He therefore does not speak the language nor would any initiatives to rehabilitate him into the German society have any likelihood for success.  So it was also questionable whether it would be relevant to transfer the sentence to Germany in the present case. The Bremen judge made it clear that it would not be satisfactory if a denial to surrender the sought person would mean crimes would go unpunished.

The German government shared this view, while France noted that it was for each Member State to decide whether they would let their courts have jurisdiction in cases in which surrender had been denied. Romania also made it clear, that it would be unacceptable if criminal activities were going un-punished because of a decision to deny surrender. If the executing Member State denies surrender, then the executing Member State must bear the responsibility to see justice fulfilled. Lithuania pointed to the fact that a decision not to surrender due to unsatisfactory detention facilities would in practice create areas within the AFSJ it which it would be impossible to punish crimes as the criminals would be able to commit their crimes in such areas and then flee to other parts of the AFSJ without risking surrendering afterwards.

A number of parties also underscored this as the major difference between asylum law and the test used in the N.S. case against criminal law and the test that may be used in the present cases. If the return of an asylum seeker is impossible, then the Member State in which the asylum seeker is at the moment will be able to process the application for asylum. It is of lesser importance for the asylum seeker whether one or the other Member State processes the application for asylum as asylum law is almost fully harmonized. The consequence of not surrendering a suspect in a criminal case could very well be that crimes would go unpunished, which is a rather different result and of course not acceptable.

What next?

The Advocate General promised to announce within 24 hours when his opinion will be submitted to the Court. The cases were heard on 15 February 2016 but the Curia-webpage still do not contain any new information by the end of the 17 February 2016. Nonetheless, Caldararu is a PPU-case as Caldararu is kept in custody, and we must therefore expect the opinion of the general advocate within few days. The decision of the Court will then be expected within a few weeks or perhaps a month, so the excitement will soon be released.

It seems apparent that especially Spain and Lithuania were very skeptical as to whether one Member State should be allowed to examine the detention facilities in another Member State at all. The other seven Member States seemed to find it appropriate to have the possibility in very exceptional circumstances. France, Romania and Hungary seemed to limit the possibility to cases with systemic problems, while the remaining Member States also wanted to be able to conduct an examination in cases with individual problems. Germany wanted to let the executing Member State demand guarantees from the issuing Member State so surrender could be denied if the requested guarantees were not delivered. The remaining Member States seemed to agree that the two Member States had to engage in a dialogue to establish whether there was a problem in the specific case at all and whether a problem could be solved by for instance alternative detention measures. It is also worth noticing the position of the Commission as a rather pragmatic approach, where the Commission supported the need to make investigations in even individual cases, using a variety of sources.

EP ADOPTS A CODIFIED VERSION OF THE SCHENGEN CODE

Following a fast-track procedure agreed by the EU legislative institutions in 94 the European Parliament has adopted on February 2 in Strasbourg, the new text of the Schengen code by consolidating in a single text the basic Regulation (EC) No 562/2006 and all the subsequent amendments entered into force to date. This makes the text adopted more readable both for the people  covered by the Schengen rules as well as by the EU Member states which have to implement it.

Continue reading “EP ADOPTS A CODIFIED VERSION OF THE SCHENGEN CODE”

EU-US “Umbrella Agreement on Data Protection: Opinion of EDPS

EDPS (*) Preliminary Opinion Published HERE on 12 February 2016

(*) The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) is an independent institution of the EU, responsible under Article 41(2) of Regulation 45/2001 ‘With respect to the processing of personal data… for ensuring that the fundamental rights and freedoms of natural persons, and in particular their right to privacy, are respected by the Community institutions and bodies’, and ‘…for advising Community institutions and bodies and data subjects on all matters concerning the processing of personal data’. He was appointed in December 2014 together with Assistant Supervisor with the specific remit of being constructive and proactive. The EDPS published in March 2015 a five-year strategy setting out how he intends to implement this remit, and to be accountable for doing so.

This Opinion builds on the general obligation that international agreements concluded by the EU must comply with the provisions of the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and the respect for fundamental rights that stands at the core of EU law. In particular, the assessment is made so as to analyse the compliance of the content of the Umbrella Agreement with Articles 7, 8 and 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and Article 16 TFEU ensuring personal data protection.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Investigating and prosecuting crime is a legitimate policy objective, and international cooperation including information exchange has become more important than ever. Until now, the EU has lacked a robust common framework in this area and so there are no consistent safeguards for individuals’ fundamental rights and freedoms. As the EDPS has long argued, the EU needs sustainable arrangements for sharing personal data with third countries for law enforcement purposes, fully compatible with the EU Treaties and the Charter of Fundamental Rights

Therefore, we welcome and actively support the efforts of the European Commission to reach a first ‘Umbrella Agreement’, with the US. This international law enforcement agreement aims at establishing for the first time data protection as the basis for information sharing. While we recognise that it is not possible to replicate entirely the terminology and definitions of EU law in an agreement with a third country, the safeguards for individuals must be clear and effective in order to fully comply with EU primary law.

The European Court of Justice in recent years has affirmed data protection principles including fairness, accuracy and relevance of information, independent oversight and individual rights of individuals These principles are as relevant for public bodies as they are for private companies, regardless of any formal EU adequacy finding with respect to third countries data protection safeguards; indeed they become all the more important considering the sensitivity of the data required for criminal investigation.

This Opinion aims to provide constructive and objective advice to the EU institutions as the Commission finalises this delicate task, with broad ramifications, not only for EU-US law enforcement cooperation but also for future international accords. The ‘Umbrella Agreement’ is separate from but has to be considered in conjunction with the recently announced EU-US ‘Privacy Shield’ on the transfer of personal information in the commercial environment. Further considerations may be necessary to analyse the interaction between these two instruments and the reform of the EU’s data protection framework.

Before the Agreement is submitted for the consent of the Parliament, we encourage the Parties to consider carefully significant developments since last September, when they signalled their intention to conclude the Agreement once the Judicial Redress Act is passed. Many safeguards already envisaged are welcome, but they should be reinforced, also in the light of the Schrems judgment in October invalidating the Safe Harbor Decision and the EU political agreement on data protection reform in December, which covers transfers and judicial and police cooperation.

The EDPS has identified three essential improvements which he recommends for the text to ensure compliance with the Charter and Article 16 of the Treaty:

* clarification that all the safeguards apply to all individuals, not only to EU nationals;

* ensuring judicial redress provisions are effective within the meaning of the Charter;

* clarification that transfers of sensitive data in bulk are not authorised.

The Opinion offers additional recommendations for clarification of the envisaged safeguards by way of an accompanying explanatory document. We remain at the disposal of the institutions for further advice and dialogue on this issue. 

Continue reading “EU-US “Umbrella Agreement on Data Protection: Opinion of EDPS”

The draft UK/EU renegotiation deal: is it ‘legally binding and irreversible’?

ORIGINAL PUBLISHED ON EU LAW ANALYSIS (Wednesday, 10 February 2016)

by Steve Peers

The draft deal on renegotiation of the UK’s EU membership has already caused great controversy: both from those (mostly in the UK) who think it does not go far enough, and those (mostly in the rest of the EU) who think it goes too far in revising EU law to satisfy the objections of one Member State. These issues are mainly substantive, and I have addressed some of them in an earlier post about theimmigration aspects of the draft deal. I’ll write later about the remaining substantive issues, although I will touch on some in this blog post. There’s already an analysis of the proposed ‘red card’ for national parliaments by Katarzyna Granathere.

Yet in addition to concerns about the substance of the deal, there are doubts about its legal nature. In particular, is the deal ‘legally binding and irreversible’, as David Cameron had pledged? The answer is complicated, because there are several different parts of the deal, taking different legal forms. For each part, the legal status depends on several different factors: when the text would be adopted; who would have to approve it; whether the EU courts have power to overturn it, and whether they are likely to do so; and whether the text could be repealed or amended in future. (I am assuming throughout that by ‘irreversible’, David Cameron meant irreversible without the UK’s consent).

This blog post answers that question, looking first at the legal form of the agreement. Next, I suggest ways in which the draft deal could be made more legally secure. Then I examine, based on prior experience, whether the EU can be ‘trusted’ to implement the draft deal. Finally, I provide, in one table, my assessment indication of the extent to which each of the parts of the draft deal are ‘legally binding and irreversible’, based on the factors mentioned above.

Legal form of the main deal

The draft deal takes the form of six draft legal texts: a Decision of the EU Member States’ Heads of State and Government (the ‘draft Decision’); a Statement of the Heads of State and Government (which consists of a draft Council Decision); aDeclaration by the European Council: and three declarations by the Commission. Implicitly, it also includes three planned EU legislative proposals, all dealing with the free movement of EU citizens (the emergency brake on benefits, EU citizens’ non-EU family members and export of child benefit), which are referred to in these texts. The UK government is also likely to table some domestic legislation linked to the renegotiation deal: I consider that prospect briefly (and propose some further national laws which the UK might consider) below.

The basic legal form of the deal, and even some of the proposed text, corresponds with suggestions I made back in May 2014, as supplemented in May 2015 and June 2015. However, the text falls short in some respects of what I suggested there; that’s a substantive issues, so more on that in a later blog post. I’ve integrated the main relevant points from those previous posts into this one, for the reader’s convenience.

One important point before we continue: while the title of the deal refers to the UK only, none of the actual text of the deal applies solely to the UK. So it would apply to all Member States. That means it’s possible, for instance, that a proposal which the UK supports could be stymied by other Member States’ national parliaments (via the Council), using the proposed new ‘red card’. It is possible, however, that the UK would be the only Member State aiming to implement some parts of the proposed deal, in particular the ‘emergency brake’ on benefits; and of course some of the existing opt-outs referred to in the draft deal only apply to the UK and one or two other Member States.

Let’s begin with the easiest parts of the draft deal: the planned EU legislation. We know the legal effect of EU legislation, once it’s adopted: it’s binding and directly applicable (in the case of the two planned Regulations), or binding as to the result to be achieved, leaving national authorities the choice of form and methods (in the case of the planned Directive). (See the definitions of EU legislation set out in Article 288 TFEU). The more difficult question here is the process. Can it be guaranteed that the proposals will: (a) be made; (b) be adopted; (c) not be struck down by the EU Court of Justice (CJEU); and (d) not revoked?

It’s up to the Commission to make proposals. The draft Decision of Member States can’t bind the Commission (more on that below), but the draft deal includes two declarations by the Commission, announcing its intention to make these proposals. For those proposals to be adopted, they must be approved by the Council (by a qualified majority) and the European Parliament (by a majority of the vote, under most variants of the EU legislative process). Again, the draft Decision of Member States can’t bind the Council or the European Parliament. But the Council is made up of Member States’ ministers, and in the draft deal the Member States commit themselves to supporting two of these three proposals (on child benefit and the emergency brake). It’s odd that there’s no parallel commitment as regards the third proposal (on EU citizens’ non-EU family members), but this may be a drafting oversight. The timing of these measures depends on how soon they would be adopted, although the Commission declares that it will table them after a ‘Remain’ vote.

The deal foresees that the law creating an ‘emergency brake’ for EU workers’ in-work benefits would subsequently have to be implemented following a UK request to use it. This would need a proposal from the Commission and a vote by the Council (by qualified majority). There would be no role for the EP at that stage. A draft Commission declaration states that the Commission is willing to make this implementing proposal; there is no commitment from the Member States to support it. Again, this might possibly be a drafting oversight. The timing would follow the adoption of the legislation on this topic: it would likely take at least one month for the UK’s request to be approved. Continue reading “The draft UK/EU renegotiation deal: is it ‘legally binding and irreversible’?”

The EU or the Commonwealth: a dilemma for the UK – or a false choice?

ORIGINAL PUBLISHED ON EU LAW ANALYSIS (29 November 2015)

by Steve Peers

The United Kingdom has its finger in many pies: the EU, NATO, the United Nations Security Council and the Commonwealth, to name just a few. Of these, the Commonwealth – which has just finished its latest summit meeting – obviously has the closest specific link to British culture and history, since it’s mainly comprised of our former colonies. (A few Commonwealth members are not former colonies, and some obscure ex-colonies like the USA chose not to join. For a full list of members, see here).

Like many British citizens, I have friends and relatives in many Commonwealth countries: Canada, India, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and South Africa. But I also have friends in the rest of the EU, as well as a professional interest in EU law. There’s no incompatibility between the two at a personal level: we can all enjoy poutine as well as paella, or watch Antonio Banderas one day and Hugh Jackman the next. But is the same true of the UK’s trade relationships?

When the UK joined the EU over forty years ago, it sundered special trade links which it had with most of the Commonwealth, and replaced them with trade links with the EU (as it’s called now). One of the arguments sometimes invoked in favour of the UK leaving the EU in the forthcoming referendum on membership is that the UK could reverse this process, reviving its Commonwealth trade.

But a lot has changed in forty years. In my view, what’s true for individuals is also true for the country as a whole: the UK does not have to choose between trade with the Commonwealth and trade with the EU, but can (and increasingly does) have both. This blog post explains why. (I’ll write another post on the issue of the EU’s trade with non-Commonwealth countries in future).

Background

Back in 1973, the UK had to end special trade ties with the Commonwealth because the EU is a customs union, which (according to the definition set out in international law) means that it has common trade rules with the rest of the world. The EU has power to sign certain types of trade deals, instead of its Member States (although in practice those deals are usually subject to Member States’ unanimous consent). But the EU’s powers don’t extend to all types of ‘trade deals’, as that phrase is used by non-specialists. Those powers apply to the imposition of taxes at the border (known as tariffs) or other economic regulation of trade between countries, but not to commercial agreements with other countries to buy British goods. So, for instance, the UK and India were free to conclude £9 billion worth of trade deals of that broader type during the recent visit of the Indian Prime Minister.

It’s sometimes argued that trade deals are irrelevant, because ‘governments don’t trade, businesses do’. While it’s true to say that much trade takes place on the basis of contracts between companies, governments still play a large role – either as purchasers of many goods and services, or as regulators with the power to impose tariffs or regulation which might reduce the volume of trade.

When the UK joined the EU, the EU was mainly only interested in special trade deals with nearby countries (although this included the Commonwealth countries of Cyprus and Malta). Mostly the EU then preferred to trade with third countries on the basis of multilateral rules instead. However, the EU did extend its existing special trade agreement for former sub-Saharan African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) colonies of France and Belgium to most of the former colonies of the UK in those parts of the world. But it did not extend any special treatment to richer Commonwealth countries, like Canada and Australia, or Commonwealth states in Asia, like India or Malaysia.

But times have changed. In recent years, the EU has become more interested in negotiating bilateral trade agreements with many countries, and not relying so much on the multilateral trade system established by the World Trade Organisation (WTO). This has transformed the EU’s trade relationship with Commonwealth countries (along with many other states). Some of these treaties don’t have the words ‘free trade agreement’ in their title, but the substance includes free trade rules; and indeed the agreements are notified as free trade agreements to the World Trade Organisation.

EU/Commonwealth trade today

The result of this change in policy is that the EU has agreed free trade agreements (FTAs), or is in the process of negotiating free trade agreements, with the vast majority of Commonwealth states – a full 90% of the 50 Commonwealth countries that are not in the EU. This includes the six Commonwealth states that accounted (in 2011) for 84% of Commonwealth trade – and many more besides.

More precisely, there are already FTAs in force between the EU and 18 of those 50 Commonwealth states (36% of the remaining Commonwealth). The EU has agreed FTAs with 14 of those countries (28%), subject only to completing the ratification process. It is negotiating or about to start negotiating FTAs with 13 states (26%). That leaves only 5 Commonwealth states (10% of the non-EU total) that the EU is not planning FTA talks with. (For full details of the status of EU trade relations with each of the countries concerned, with links to further information, see the annex to this blog post).

Of course, the Commonwealth includes many different types of economy, but the EU has agreed FTAs with two of the wealthiest Commonwealth states (Canada and Singapore), and has recently committed to talks with two more (Australia and New Zealand). It also has deals or is negotiating with most of the larger developing Commonwealth members (India, Nigeria, South Africa and Malaysia).

It’s sometimes suggested that the EU’s trade deals with other countries don’t benefit the UK. But the UK’s exports to Commonwealth countries have beenincreasing at over 10% a year – with increases (over two years) of 33% to India, 31% to South Africa, 30% to Australia and 18% to Canada. In fact, since 2004, Britishexports to India are up 143%. Needless to say, this increase in trade with the Commonwealth (while an EU member) must have created or maintained many British jobs.

Criticisms of the EU’s trade policy

The EU’s trade policy is often criticised on three particular grounds. While there may be some force to these arguments, the issue in the upcoming referendum is whether these problems would actually be solved by the UK leaving the EU.

First of all, it’s often argued that EU trade agreements are not fair for developing countries. In fact, the EU’s negotiation of FTAs with developing Commonwealth countries in the last decade is in part due to WTO rulings that the EU could not just sign one-way trade deals, liberalising only access to EU markets; such treaties have to liberalise trade on both sides (the EU had resisted this). The EU does offer less generous unilateral trade preferences as an alternative to two-way deals (and some Commonwealth states, like Bangladesh, prefer this).

If the UK left the EU, it could decide not to sign trade deals with some of the developing Commonwealth countries that the EU has signed deals with. It could also offer a more generous version of unilateral trade preferences. However, the UK would not be free to sign deals for one-way trade liberalisation, since it would be bound by the same WTO rules on trade agreements that the EU breached when it signed those deals. Moreover, while not replacing the EU’s trade deals would arguably help the poorest countries’ economies, UK exports to those States would logically be lower.

The second argument is that the EU’s trade deals are a problem for the environment and public services, and give industry overly generous intellectual property protection, with the result (for instance) that prices of basic medicines rise due to extended patent protection. But this argument is equally made against many trade deals that the EU is not a party to at all – such as the recent Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.

So, while (stepping outside the Commonwealth for a moment) the planned EU/US trade agreement, known as TTIP, has attracted critics concerned about its effect upon the UK’s health care (among many other things), those issues would not magically go away if the UK, having left the EU, sought to negotiate its own trade agreement with the USA instead. The controversial parts of the draft deal are surely attractive to the US side as well as the EU side; it’s not as if the EU is in a position to issue non-negotiable demands to desperate, poverty-stricken Americans.

The third argument is that the EU is not sufficiently interested in pursuing trade deals. As the facts discussed above show, it’s quite false to suggest that the EU is not interested in trade deals with Commonwealth countries, or that the UK’s EU membership makes it impossible for British businesses to increase their exports to those countries. But could it be argued that the UK alone would do a better job of negotiating such trade deals, and negotiating them more quickly, after Brexit?

It’s true that it often takes years to negotiate EU trade agreements, and that some negotiations stall or slow down to a snail’s pace (with India, for instance). But this is not unique to the EU. Over twenty years ago, for instance, the Clinton administration developed a plan for a ‘Free Trade Area of the Americas’ – but it has never come to full fruition, and talks eventually fizzled out. There’s no guarantee that the UK alone would be able to reach agreements more quickly than the EU as a whole.

In any event, as noted above, the EU already has agreed trade deals with 64% of Commonwealth countries, and is negotiating with another 26%. Some of the latter negotiations are likely to be completed by the time that Brexit took place – since that would probably happen two years after the referendum date, so likely in 2018 or 2019 (for more discussion of the process of withdrawal from the EU, see here).

So the UK would have to ask perhaps three-quarters of its Commonwealth partners for trade deals to replace those already agreed with the EU. They might agree quickly to extend to the UK a parallel version of their existing arrangement with the EU, since that would not really change the status quo. But they might not be interested in negotiating any further trade liberalisation. If they are interested, they will ask for concessions in return, and this will take time to negotiate.

For the remaining one-quarter or so of states, the UK will have to start negotiations from scratch, in some cases having to catch up with EU negotiations that are already underway. And there is no guarantee that these other states will want to discuss FTAs, or that negotiations would be successful.

Overall then, there’s no certainty that UK exports to the Commonwealth would gain from Brexit. They might even drop, if some Commonwealth countries aren’t interested in replicating the EU’s trade agreements. Alternatively, they might increase – but it’s hard to see how any gain in British exports would be enormous, given the existence of so many FTAs between the EU and Commonwealth countries already, and the uncertainty of those states’ willingness to renegotiate those deals.

Could this very hypothetical increase in exports to the Commonwealth make up for any loss in UK exports to the EU following Brexit? Obviously, this assessment depends on how Brexit would affect UK/EU trade relations. That’s a hugely complex subject, which I will return to another day, but suffice it to say that while I think a UK/EU trade deal after Brexit is likely, it’s far from guaranteed. And it’s hugely unlikely that any such trade deal would retain 100% of the UK’s access to the EU market. There are many reasons to doubt this could happen, but first and foremost: why would the EU send the signal that a Member State could leave the EU but retain all of its trade access? If it did that, the EU would be signing its own death warrant.

The key fact to keep in mind here is that the UK’s trade with the Commonwealth isless than one-quarter of its trade with the EU. So to make up for even a 10% drop in exports to the EU, the UK would have to increase exports to the Commonwealth by more than 40%. How likely is that, when the vast majority of trade between the EU and the Commonwealth would already be covered by FTAs at that point?

Taken as a whole then, it’s clear that the UK can remain a member of the EU andtrade with the Commonwealth – and that this trade will only increase in future as more EU FTAs with Commonwealth states come into force or are negotiated. Leaving the EU, on the other hand, is liable to lead to reduction in trade with the remaining EU without any plausible likelihood that trade with the Commonwealth would increase by anything near the level necessary to compensate.

Annex

Canada: FTA agreed. It must still undergo the formal ratification process.
Australia: FTA negotiations start soon
New Zealand: FTA negotiations start soon
South Africa: FTA in force
India: FTA under negotiation
Singapore: FTA agreed. It must still undergo the formal ratification process.
Malaysia: FTA under negotiation
Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives: No plans for FTA
12 Caribbean Commonwealth states: FTA in force between EU and 15 countries including Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, Saint Kitts and Nevis and Trinidad and Tobago
Brunei: No plans for FTA
2 Pacific Commonwealth states: FTA in force with Papua New Guinea and Fiji
7 more Pacific Commonwealth states: FTA under negotiation between EU and 12 more countries including Kiribati, Nauru, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu
3 West African Commonwealth states: FTA agreed with 16 West African countries including Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone. It must still undergo the formal ratification process. (Note that Gambia left the Commonwealth in 2013; but it is also part of this agreement).
Cameroon: FTA in force
4 East African Commonwealth states: FTA agreed with 5 East African countries including Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda. It must still undergo the formal ratification process.
2 Southern and Eastern African Commonwealth states: FTA in force with 4 Southern and Eastern African countries including Mauritius and Seychelles (and also Zimbabwe, a former Commonwealth country).
2 other Southern and Eastern African Commonwealth states: FTA under negotiation with 7 more Southern and Eastern African countries including Malawi and Zambia.
5 Southern African Commonwealth states: FTA agreed with Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Swaziland and Mozambique. It must still undergo the formal ratification process. (Update: the Commission proposed the signature and provisional application of this deal in January 2016)

BETTER…ADMINISTRATIVE MAKING AT EU LEVEL (when the European Parliament paves the way to an, almost reluctant, European Commission…).

Since years the European Parliament ask the European Commission to submit a formal legislative proposal framing the administrative activity of the European Union as foreseen by art 298 of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union and by the European Charter of Fundamental Rights.

According to the former “In carrying out their missions, the institutions, bodies, offices and agencies of the Union shall have the support of an open, efficient and independent European administration”.

Even more clearly the art 41 of the Charter (Right to good administration) states that :
1. Every person has the right to have his or her affairs handled impartially, fairly and within a reasonable time by the institutions, bodies, offices and agencies of the Union.
2.This right includes:
(a)the right of every person to be heard, before any individual measure which would affect him or her adversely is taken;
(b)the right of every person to have access to his or her file, while respecting the legitimate interests of confidentiality and of professional and business secrecy;
(c)the obligation of the administration to give reasons for its decisions.
3.Every person has the right to have the Union make good any damage caused by its institutions or by its servants in the performance of their duties, in accordance with the general principles common to the laws of the Member States.
4. Every person may write to the institutions of the Union in one of the languages of the Treaties and must have an answer in the same language.”

More than six year have past since the entry into force of the Treaty, in the meantime the EU administrative constellation has become even more complex with new agencies, authorities and networks but the European Commission has not yet considered that the time has come to bring some order in a domain which many have described as the “maquis” communautaire (instead of “aquis” communautaire..). This is even more appalling bearing in mind the increasing importance recognized also by the Court of Justice to the principle of good administration when assessing the legitimacy of the activity of the EU Member States or even of third countries. ..

It has then to be praised the fact that also in this legislature the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) of the European Parliament has decided to ask to a group of eminent experts in this domain to write a full fledged legislative text which can “inspire” the European Commission. The full study and the text are accessible here .

Below the text of the draft legislative proposal as well as the first part of the study “The context and legal elements of a Proposal for a Regulation on the Administrative Procedure of the European Union’s institutions, bodies, offices and agencies” authored by Professors  Diana-Urania    Galetta,   Herwig   C.   H.   Hofmann,   Oriol  Mir Puigpelat and Jacques Ziller.

Emilio De Capitani

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Proposal for  a REGULATION OF THE   EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL on the  Administrative Procedure  of  the  European  Union’s  institutions, bodies,  offices  and  agencies

THE EUROPEAN   PARLIAMENT  AND  THE  COUNCIL OF  THE EUROPEAN UNION,
Having    regard    to    the    Treaty    on    the    Functioning    of   the    European    Union,   and    in    particular Article  298   thereof,
Having  regard  to  the proposal  from  the European  Commission,
After  transmission of  the draft legislative act  to  the national  parliaments,
Acting in accordance with  the  ordinary  legislative procedure, Whereas:
(1) With the development of the competences of the European Union, citizens are increasingly confronted with the Union’s institutions, bodies, offices and agencies, without  always having their procedural  rights adequately  protected.
(2) In a Union under the rule of law it is necessary to ensure that procedural rights and obligations are always adequately defined, developed and complied with. Citizens are entitled to expect a high level of transparency, efficiency, swift execution and responsiveness from the Union’s institutions, bodies, offices and agencies. Citizens are also entitled to receive adequate information regarding possibility to take any further  action  in the matter.
(3) The existing rules and principles on good administration are scattered across a wide variety of sources: primary law, secondary law, case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, soft law and unilateral commitments by the Union’s institutions.
(4) Over the years, the Union has developed an extensive number of sectoral administrative procedures, in the form of both binding provisions and soft law, without necessarily taking into account the overall coherence of the system. This complex variety of procedures has resulted in gaps and inconsistencies in these procedures.
(5) The fact that the Union lacks a coherent and comprehensive set of codified rules of administrative law makes it difficult for citizens to understand their administrative rights under  Union  law.
(6) In April 2000, the European Ombudsman proposed to the institutions a Code of Good Administrative Behaviour in the belief that the same code should apply to all Union institutions,  bodies,  offices   and   agencies.
(7) In its resolution of 6 September 2001, Parliament approved the European Ombudsman’s draft code with modifications and called on the Commission to submit a proposal for a regulation containing a Code of Good Administrative Behaviour based   on  Article  308  of the  Treaty establishing  the European Community.
(8) The existing internal codes of conduct subsequently adopted by the different institutions, mostly based on that Ombudsman’s Code, have a limited effect, differ from one   another  and  are  not   legally binding.
(9) The entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon has provided the Union with the legal basis for the adoption of an Administrative Procedure Regulation. Article 298 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) provides for the adoption of regulations to assure that in carrying out their mission, the institutions, bodies, offices and agencies of the Union have the support of an open, efficient and independent European administration. The entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon also gave the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (“the Charter”) the  same  legal   value  as  the  Treaties.
(10) Title V (“Citizens’ Rights”) of the Charter enshrines the right to good administration in Article 41, which provides that every person has the right to have his or her affairs handled impartially, fairly and within a reasonable time by the institutions, bodies, offices and agencies of the Union. Article 41 of the Charter further indicates, in a non-exhaustive way, some of the elements included in the definition of the right to good administration such as the right to be heard, the right of every person to have access to their file, the right to be given reasons for a decision of the administration and the possibility of claiming damages caused by the institutions and  its servants  in  the  performance  of their  duties,  and  language  rights.
(11) An efficient Union administration is essential for the public interest. An excess as well as a lack of rules and procedures can lead to maladministration, which may also result from the existence of contradictory, inconsistent or unclear rules and procedures.
(12) Properly structured and consistent administrative procedures support both an efficient administration and a proper enforcement of the right to good administration guaranteed  as a  general  principle  of  Union  law  and under Article  41 of  the Charter.
(13) In its Resolution of 15 January 2013 the European Parliament called for the adoption of a regulation on a European Law of Administrative Procedure to guarantee the right to good administration by means of an open, efficient and independent European administration. Establishing a common set of rules of administrative procedure at the level of the Union’s institutions, bodies, offices and agencies should enhance legal certainty, fill gaps in the Union legal system and should thereby contribute to compliance  with  the  rule  of law.
(14) The purpose of this Regulation is to establish a set of procedural rules which the Union’s administration should comply with when carrying out its administrative activities. These procedural rules aim at assuring both an open, efficient and independent administration and a proper enforcement of the right to good administration.
(15) In line with Article 298 TFEU this Regulation should not apply to the Member States’ administrations.. Furthermore, this Regulation should not apply to legislative procedures, judicial proceedings and procedures leading to the adoption of non-legislative acts directly based on the Treaties, delegated acts or implementing  acts.
(16) This Regulation should apply to the Union’s administration without prejudice to other Union’s legal acts which provide for specific administrative procedural rules. However, sector-specific administrative procedures are not fully coherent and complete. With a view to ensuring overall coherence in the administrative activities of the Union’s administration and full respect of the right to a good administration, legal acts providing for specific administrative procedural rules should, therefore, be interpreted in compliance with this Regulation and their gaps should be filled by the relevant provisions of this Regulation. This Regulation establishes rights and obligations as a default rule for all administrative procedures under Union law and therefore reduces the fragmentation of applicable procedural rules, which result from  sector-specific  legislation.
(17) The procedural administrative rules laid down in this Regulation aim at implementing the principles on good administration established in a large variety of legal sources in light of the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union. Those principles are set out here below and their formulation should inspire the  interpretation   of  the  provisions  of   this   Regulation.
(18) The principle of the rule of law, as recalled in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), is the heart and soul of the Union’s values. In accordance with that principle, any action of the Union has to be based on the Treaties in compliance with the principle of conferral. Furthermore, the principle of legality, as a corollary to the rule of law, requires that activities of the Union’s administration are carried out in full  accordance with the law.
(19) Any legal act of Union law has to comply with the principle of proportionality. This requires any measure of the Union’s administration to be appropriate and necessary for meeting the objectives legitimately pursued by the measure in question: where there is a choice among several potentially appropriate measures, the least burdensome option has to be taken and any charges imposed by the administration not  be  disproportionate  to  the  aims  pursued.
(20) The right to good administration requires that administrative acts be taken by the Union’s administration pursuant to administrative procedures which guarantee impartiality,  fairness  and   timeliness.
(21) The right to good administration requires that any decision to initiate an administrative procedure be notified to the parties and provide the necessary information enabling them to exercise their rights during the administrative procedure. In duly justified and exceptional cases where the public interest so requires,  the  Union’s   administration   may  delay   or  omit   the  notification.
(22) When the administrative procedure is initiated upon application by a party, the right to good administration imposes a duty on the Union’s administration to acknowledge receipt of the application in writing. The acknowledgment of receipt should indicate the necessary information enabling the party to exercise his or her rights of defence during the administrative procedure. However, the Union’s administration should be entitled to reject pointless or abusive applications as they might  jeopardize  administrative  efficiency.
(23) For the purposes of legal certainty an administrative procedure should be initiated within a reasonable time after the event has occurred. Therefore, this Regulation should  include   provisions   on   a  period  of  limitation.
(24) The right to good administration requires that the Union’s administration exercise a duty of care, which obliges the administration to establish and review in a careful and impartial manner all the relevant factual and legal elements of a case taking into account all pertinent interests, at every stage of the procedure. To that end, the Union’s administration should be empowered to hear the evidence of parties, witnesses and experts, request documents and records and carry out visits or inspections. When choosing experts, the Union’s administration should ensure that they  are  technically   competent  and  not  affected  by  a  conflict   of  interest.
(25) During the investigation carried out by the Union’s administration the parties should have a duty to cooperate by assisting the administration in ascertaining the facts and circumstances of the case. When requesting the parties to cooperate, the Union’s administration should give them a reasonable time-limit to reply and should remind them of the right against self-incrimination where the administrative procedure  may  lead  to  a  penalty.
(26) The right to be treated impartially by the Union’s administration is a corollary of the fundamental right to good administration and implies staff members’ duty to abstain   from   taking   part   in   an   administrative   procedure   where   they   have,   directly or indirectly,    a    personal    interest,    including,    in    particular,    any    family    or    financial interest,  such   as  to   impair  their  impartiality.
(27) The right to good administration might require that, under certain circumstances inspections be carried out by the administration, where this is necessary to fulfil a duty or achieve an objective under Union law. Those inspections should respect certain   conditions  and  procedures  in   order  to   safeguard   the   rights   of  the  parties.
(28) The right to be heard should be complied with in all proceedings initiated against a person which are liable to conclude in a measure adversely affecting that person. It should not be excluded or restricted by any legislative measure. The right to be heard requires that the person concerned receive an exact and complete statement of the claims or objections raised and is given the opportunity to submit comments on  the  truth   and  relevance  of  the   facts  and   on   the  documents  used.
(29) The right to good administration includes the right of a party to the administrative procedure to have access to its own file, which is also an essential requirement in order to enjoy the right to be heard. When the protection of the legitimate interests of confidentiality and of professional and business secrecy does not allow full access to a file, the party should at least be provided with an adequate summary of the content of the file. With a view to facilitating access to one’s files and thus ensuring transparent information management, the Union’s administration should keep records of its incoming and outgoing mail, of the documents it receives and measures it takes, and establish an index of the recorded   files.
(30) The Union’s administration should adopt administrative acts within a reasonable time-limit. Slow administration is bad administration. Any delay in adopting an administrative act should be justified and the party to the administrative procedure should be duly informed thereof and provided with an estimate of the expected date  of  the  adoption   of  the  administrative  act.
(31) The right to good administration imposes a duty on the Union’s administration to state clearly the reasons on which its administrative acts are based. The statement of reasons should indicate the legal basis of the act, the general situation which led to its adoption and the general objectives which it intends to achieve. It should disclose clearly and unequivocally the reasoning of the competent authority which adopted the act in such a way as to enable the parties concerned to decide if they wish   to  defend  their   rights  by  an  application   for  judicial   review.
(32) In accordance with the right to an effective remedy, neither the Union nor Member States can render virtually impossible or excessively difficult the exercise of rights conferred by Union law. Instead, they are obliged to guarantee real and effective judicial protection and are barred from applying any rule or procedure which might prevent,   even   temporarily,  Union  law  from   having   full   force  and   effect.
(33) In accordance with the principles of transparency and legal certainty, parties to an administrative procedure should be able to clearly understand their rights and duties that derive from an administrative act addressed to them. For these purposes, the Union’s administration should ensure that its administrative acts are drafted in a clear, simple and understandable language and take effect upon notification to the parties. When carrying out that obligation it is necessary for the Union’s administration to make proper use of information and communication technologies and  to adapt  to their development.
(34) For the purposes of transparency and administrative efficiency, the Union’s administration should ensure that clerical, arithmetic or similar errors in its administrative  acts are corrected  by  the competent authority.
(35) The principle of legality, as a corollary to the rule of law, imposes a duty on the Union’s administration to rectify or withdraw unlawful administrative acts. However,   considering   that   any   rectification   or   withdrawal of   an   administrative   act may conflict with the protection of legitimate expectations and the principle of legal certainty, the Union’s administration should carefully and impartially assess the effects of the rectification or withdrawal on other parties and include the conclusions of such an assessment in the reasons of the rectifying or withdrawing act.
(36) Citizens of the Union have the right to write to the Union’s institutions, bodies, offices and agencies in one of the languages of the Treaties and to have an answer in the same language. The Union’s administration should respect the language rights of the parties by ensuring that the administrative procedure is carried out in one of the languages of the Treaties chosen by the party. In the case of an administrative procedure initiated by the Union’s administration, the first notification should be drafted in one of the languages of the Treaty corresponding to  the  Member  State  in  which  the  party  is  located.
(37) The principle of transparency and the right of access to documents have a particular importance under an administrative procedure without prejudice of the legislative acts adopted under Article 15(3) TFEU. Any limitation of those principles should be narrowly construed to comply with the criteria set out in Article 52(1) of the Charter and therefore should be provided for by law and should respect the essence of the rights and freedoms and be subject to the principle of proportionality.
(38) The right to protection of personal data implies that without prejudice of the legislative acts adopted under Article 16 TFEU, data used by the Union’s administration   should  be  accurate,  up-to-date   and  lawfully   recorded.
(39) The principle of protection of legitimate expectations derives from the rule of law and implies that actions of public bodies should not interfere with vested rights and final legal situations except where it is imperatively necessary in the public interest. Legitimate expectations should be duly taken into account where an administrative act  is  rectified  or  withdrawn.
(40) The principle of legal certainty requires Union rules to be clear and precise. That principle aims at ensuring that situations and legal relationships governed by Union law remain foreseeable in that individuals should be able to ascertain unequivocally what their rights and obligations are and be able to take steps accordingly. In accordance with the principle of legal certainty, retroactive measures should not be taken  except  in  legally justified circumstances.
(41) With a view to ensuring overall coherence in the activities of the Union’s administration, administrative acts of general scope should comply with the principles  of  good administration  referred  to  in  this  Regulation.
(42) In the interpretation of this Regulation, regard should be had especially to equal treatment and non-discrimination, which apply to administrative activities as a prominent corollary to the rule of law and the principles of an efficient and independent  European  administration,
 
HAVE  ADOPTED  THIS  REGULATION: 
 
CHAPTER I GENERAL   PROVISIONS
 
Article  1 Subject  matter and objective…
  Continue reading “BETTER…ADMINISTRATIVE MAKING AT EU LEVEL (when the European Parliament paves the way to an, almost reluctant, European Commission…).”

From Dublin to Athens: A Plea for a Radical Rethinking of the Allocation of Jurisdiction in Asylum Procedures 

Click to access IIHL-A-plea-for-the-reform-of-the-Dublin-system-policy-brief-def.pdf

FULL STUDY PUBLISHED HERE
by Marcello Di Filippo (1)
ABSTRACT (Policy Brief – January 2016) (2)
The so called refugee crisis of 2015 had several effects, among which the definitive demonstration of the unsustainability of the Dublin system and the need of a radical change in the modalities of allocation of the competence for the exam of asylum claims in the EU. 
The same credibility of the EU is at stake, as well as the capacities of national governments to manage the relevant flows reaching the Schengen area. 
This Policy Brief provides sound arguments both for supporting the demand for a new legal framework, and for the determination of new criteria which combines fairness, realism, solidarity, cooperation. 
A quota approach would be combined with a “genuine link” approach, thus trying to find a proper balance between the States’ interests and the point of view (and related behaviors) of asylum seekers, and also between the objections of human rights defenders and the concerns of European public opinion. 
The need to turn the page with the Dublin age warmly suggests to choose, for the new proposed regulation, a nick name which evokes the features of the current historical (and dramatic) passage of European integration and our deep sense of belonging to a place where much part of our way of thinking and of being a society is rooted: Athens. 
Having regard to the lessons learnt from decades of regulation of the determination of jurisdiction in civil, commercial and criminal matters, a first step to take is the adoption of a new conception for the role of the asylum seeker, who should be allocated to the State with which he/she holds a substantial link: the configuration of the relevant connecting factors (family relations; economic or social ties) should pay due regard to the empirical dimension of the phenomenon and to the need to avoid unnecessary sufferance and waste of public funds and time. 
If the asylum seeker has genuine links with more States, a certain relevance to his/her free choice should be awarded. 
Lacking any connection with a given country, the State with the lowest performance in fulfilling its reference quota should be the competent one. In the same time, an already overburdened country should be afforded the possibility to refuse responsibility, provided that some basic family ties are safeguarded. In such cases, a less connected country should be responsible, or the one less engaged in hosting asylum seekers and refugees, or as extrema ratio the country of first entrance or where the application is lodged. Whether an asylum seeker is allocated to a country where he/she does not have any substantial link and his/her asylum claim receives a positive outcome, the possibility of accepting a genuine job offer in another Member State should be admitted. This way, a partial freedom of circulation for work purposes could be recognized, but its exercise would relieve the first Member State by protection duties. As an accompanying measure, a system of financial incentives/disincentives for Member States should be conceived. 
Continue reading..
 1 Associate Professor of International Law (University of Pisa; marcello.difilippo@unipi.it), Member of the International Institute of Humanitarian Law (http://www.iihl.org), Coordinator of the Observatory on European Migration Law (http://immigrazione.jus.unipi.it).
The author is grateful to G. Beruto, S. Baldini and to the whole IIHL staff for their precious support, and to A. Baldaccini, C. Hein, S. Marinai, and E. Papastavridis for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper.
2 Policy Brief elaborated with the support of the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the International Cooperation (contribution awarded under Article 2 Law No. 948/82).

Click to access IIHL-A-plea-for-the-reform-of-the-Dublin-system-policy-brief-def.pdf

The EU, Turkey and the Refugee Crisis: What could possibly go wrong?

ORIGINAL PUBLISHED ON EU LAW ANALYSIS (Friday, 5 February 2016)

by Steve Peers* and Emanuela Roman, **

The key non-EU country in the EU’s ongoing refugee crisis is Turkey: the host ofover 2 million Syrian refugees, and a transit country for many asylum-seekers. An increasing number of them have been making the journey from Turkey to the Greek islands, leading to a significant rise in the number of would-be asylum-seekers in the EU over the last year. Tragically, many have died making this crossing.

To address these issues, the EU and Turkey reached a deal in November with a number of different elements. The main aim was to improve the position of Syrian refugees in Turkey (reducing the ‘push’ factor which results in more people planning to leave), and to return to Turkey those who did not need international protection. But, according to the latest Frontex statistics, most of the people arriving from Turkey do need international protection: about 90% of those arriving in Greece in December were from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, countries with high recognition rates for asylum claims.

It follows that returning to Turkey only those who don’t need international protection would only make a small dent in the numbers coming to the EU. Many politicians, in reaction to a portion of public opinion, would like to reduce those numbers far more. So last week, a further plan emerged: to return to Turkey those who do need international protection, on the grounds that they already had such protection in Turkey – or if not, they should seek it there. This would entail designating Turkey as a ‘safe third country’. The plan would entail a nearly immediate return to Turkey of any would-be asylum-seekers who reached the Greek islands.

The following analysis looks first of all at the main elements of the overall EU/Turkey deal on the refugee crisis, then in more detail at the new plan to return asylum-seekers to Turkey.

The EU/Turkey deal

The EU/Turkey deal contains concessions on both sides. The EU side has agreed: the opening of another chapter in the EU/Turkey accession process, and preparatory work by the Commission on further chapters; a proposal to lift Schengen visa requirements for Turkey by October 2016, if Turkey meets the requirements of the EU’s ‘roadmap’ on visa liberalisation; and a ‘Refugee Facility for Turkey’, totalling of €3 billion for Turkey. Subsequently, the Commission adopted a Recommendation on an EU ‘humanitarian admission scheme’ of Syrian refugees from Turkey (discussed in detail by Laura Robbins-Wright here).

In return, the Turkish side agreed: to readmit non-Turkish nationals to its territory, from June 2016; to apply a previously-agreed plan on the status of Syrian refugees in Turkey; and to prevent non-EU citizens from leaving.

There are also agreements in both sides’ mutual interest: to hold regular summits (at least twice a year); and to ‘upgrade’ the EU/Turkey customs union, to include services and investment, with negotiations to start before the end of 2016.

Several elements of the deal should be clarified further. It’s sometimes claimed that the deal has ‘fast-tracked’ Turkish membership of the EU. This is clearly not the case. Turkey applied for EU membership in 1987, and negotiation talks opened 18 years later, in 2005. In the eleven years since, the EU and Turkey have agreed only one of the 35 ‘chapters’ of issues being discussed in the negotiation. Before last year’s deal, they had opened another 13 chapters; the deal raised that number to 14. There is no date to open talks on the remaining 20 chapters; the deal is expressly without prejudice to EU Member States’ position on the planned ‘preparatory work’. Overall, the deal means that the enlargement negotiations will now move at the pace of a turtle, instead of a snail.

The prospect of Turkish accession to the EU also faces a number of obstacles on the EU side: objections by many Member States (including possible referendums), and misgivings by the European Parliament (which must approve accession treaties). Nor would accession lead immediately to free movement of Turkish citizens to the EU. Recent accession treaties have provided for waiting periods of seven years before workers from the new Member States can move to the older Member States, and the UK, which has a veto over accession treaties, insists that future enlargements must provide for even longer waiting periods.

As for the visa waiver, it should be noted that it will apply to (short-term) visas to visit the Schengen states. Therefore it will not ever apply to the UK and Ireland; and does not yet apply to Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia or Cyprus. It’s the EU’s usual practice to offer visa facilitation (fast-track issue of visas, with reduced fees) and then a full visa waiver to neighbouring States which have agreed a readmission treaty. As the text of the EU/Turkey deal points out, that waiver is dependent in each case upon the third State fulfilling a list of conditions set out by the EU (for the Commission’s most recent report on Turkey meeting those conditions, see here).

It’s the readmission deal – the quid pro quo for the visa waiver – that is central to the issue of the refugee crisis. The EU/Turkey readmission treaty has applied since October 2014. It applies to Turkish citizens straight away, but Turkey (like many other states signing up to readmission treaties) negotiated a delay before it applies to nationals of other countries. That’s a three year delay, so it was due to expire in October 2017. However, in light of the perceived migration and refugee crisis, the EU was not willing to wait that long until it called upon Turkey to accept third-state citizens back onto its territory.

Finally, the ‘Refugee Facility for Turkey’ aims to reduce the ‘push’ factor which leads to departures from Turkey to the EU. According to the Decision establishing the fund – which Member States finally agreed to recently – the Fund will assist refugees and host communities. No further details are given.

Before we look at the substance of the law on returning people to Turkey, it’s useful to make some general observations on EU policy in this area. Some critics of EU asylum policy argue that it should be more like the Australian policy. In fact, in some ways the EU is moving towards such a policy, as we’ll see. But – leaving aside for a moment the desirability of the EU adopting an ‘Australian’ asylum policy – there are legal, political, geographical and practical limits to doing so.

In a nutshell, Australia intercepts vessels of asylum-seekers on the high seas (international waters) and arranges for the asylum-seekers to be detained and their applications processed in other countries, which Australia considers to be ‘safe’. Furthermore, Australia resettles confirmed refugees directly from third countries (about 13,000 a year), as its contribution to sharing the burdens of the countries which host those refugees (the large majority of refugees live in developing countries).

There’s no legal obligation upon the countries which Australia considers ‘safe’ to take the asylum-seekers and process them. The UN Convention on Refugees (the ‘Geneva Convention’) imposes no such obligation (on the international law framework for ‘safe third country’ rules, see discussion here). Even if it did, some of the countries concerned haven’t ratified that treaty. So Australia has to talk those countries into accepting the people concerned. They won’t accept unless Australia pays most of the costs.

How does this compare with the EU? First of all, the numbers are hugely different:18,000 people arrived illegally by sea in Australia in 2012-13, whereas over a million potential asylum-seekers arrived in the EU last year. We’re comparing apples and orchards here. There are simply more people wanting to apply for protection in closer vicinity to the EU, as compared to Australia, and the distance to travel is shorter. Furthermore, there are no ‘high seas’ between Greece and Turkey, so interception raises different legal issues. Once would-be asylum-seekers reach Greek waters, EU law says they can apply for asylum, and Greece is also bound by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) as regards them.

That brings us to the next distinction. The Australian constitution has weak human rights protection, and that country’s High Court has recently ruled in favour of the offshore detention policy. In contrast, EU countries are governed by the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which is open to individual complaints and can give binding rulings, often critical of national policies in this area. While Australia has signed up to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and allows individuals to make complaints to the United Nations Committee which interprets that Covenant, the Committee’s rulings aren’t binding. When the Committee rules against Australian policy on asylum-seekers – which it often does – Australian politicians in effect throw the ruling on the barbecue.

So given the large numbers concerned and the legal constraints, if the EU wants non-EU countries to take back non-citizens of those countries who have made their way to the EU, it needs to offer a lot to them to convince them to do so. At first sight, it may seem overly generous for the EU to offer money to Turkey, waive visa requirements and accelerate the accession process a little, in order to secure Turkey’s cooperation as regards refugees and migrants. But Turkey is under no obligation now to take back non-citizens or to restrain them from leaving. Even after it agrees to accept returns of non-citizens to its territory, it could end its obligations at any time by denouncing the readmission agreement – if it is willing to accept the re-imposition of visa requirements by the EU as a consequence. The financial assistance, if spent as intended, will also reduce the ‘push’ factor for migration of Syrian refugees towards the EU.

Returning people to Turkey

Turkish citizens

Turkey is already obliged to accept back its own citizens under the readmission agreement with the EU. Turkish citizens in the EU might have rights to stay under the EU’s immigration and asylum legislation, or under the EU/Turkey associationagreement. But they have no general right of free movement to the EU, and there is no prospect of it being extended to them before (or indeed well after) EU membership. So those Turkish citizens in the EU without such a right to stay, including failed asylum-seekers, must be returned.

It should be noted that the EU Commission has proposed to list Turkey as a ‘safe country of origin’ for asylum purposes, meaning that asylum claims by Turks would be fast-tracked (but not rejected automatically). This is a rather dubious suggestion (for the reasons set out here), and it is not yet known whether it will be accepted.

Non-Turkish citizens: Irregular migrants

Turkey is not obliged to accept back any non-Turkish citizens until it brings forward the relevant obligations in the EU/Turkey plan – as it has agreed to do so. If someone has never applied for asylum, and has no other ground to stay, EU Member States will then be able to return them to Turkey, if the Member States can prove that the person was previously in Turkey. It should be sufficient to show that the person concerned crossed from Turkey to a Greek island.

This is equally the case for failed asylum-seekers, if the person concerned has failed on the merits. In other words, if the non-Turkish citizen has not convinced the Member State’s authorities (or the courts on appeal) that he or she faced persecution or serious harm, that person could be sent back to Turkey once that country extends the scope of the readmission deal.

The more difficult question – which is the subject of the new plan – is whether asylum-seekers who have come via Turkey can be rejected and returned to Turkey on the grounds that their applications are inadmissible. Let’s be clear what that means: those applications would not be rejected on the basis that the person wasn’t a genuine refugee, but that he or she either (a) could have applied for protection in Turkey or (b) already had protection there. The former is the ‘safe third country’ concept; the latter is the ‘first country of asylum’ concept. There are detailed definitions of each concept in EU law, in the Asylum Procedures Directive. We will consider those definitions in turn.

Is Turkey a ‘safe third country’?

On Thursday 28 January 2016, Diederik Samsom, leader of the Dutch Labour Party, announced in an interview with the newspaper De Volkskrant (followed by an interview on the nightly TV programme Niewsuur) a Dutch proposal for a new plan to radically reduce the number of migrants and asylum-seekers entering the EU from Turkey. The proposal was immediately baptised ‘the Samsom Plan’.

The plan would have the support of Dutch PM Mark Rutte and would also receive support by a number of EU Member States, among which Germany, Austria and Sweden. The idea is to offer Turkey the resettlement of 150,000 to 250,000 refugees per year from Turkey to the EU countries that voluntarily agree with the plan. This resettlement would presumably be on the basis of the Commission Recommendation on humanitarian admission from Turkey, referred to above. In exchange for this, Turkey would have to accept the return of all migrants and asylum-seekers who cross the Greek-Turkish border irregularly. According to Mr Samson, these people would have to be very rapidly returned from Greece to Turkey by ferry-boat, and it would be Turkey’s responsibility to deal with their reception and asylum application.

This new plan is based on the assumption that Turkey can be considered a ‘safe third country’ – a non-EU country where an asylum-seeker can apply for asylum and be granted access to asylum procedures and reception conditions in line with international and EU law.

The Samsom Plan, however, does not seem to come from Mr Samsom’s mind. The European Stability Initiative (ESI), a think tank specialised in Southeast Europe, presented a very similar proposal in October 2015. The original plan, based on the fundamental idea of considering Turkey a safe third country, was called ‘Merkel Plan’, because initially Germany alone would have the main role in the resettlement scheme with Turkey. The original plan was then further developed (becoming‘Merkel Plan 2.0’) and a ‘coalition of the willing’ (including the Netherlands) was gathered around Germany. From October 2015 to January 2016 the ESI presented this proposal in different countries across Europe, but it was only following Mr Samsom’s interview, that the now renamed Samsom Plan burst into the public debate.

What is the legal definition of a ‘safe third country’? Article 38(1) of the Asylum Procedures Directive sets out a series of legal requirements that need to be met in order for a third country to be considered ‘safe’ for asylum-seekers:

  1. a) life and liberty shall not be threatened on account of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion;
  2. b) there shall be no risk of serious harm (consisting of: death penalty; torture or unhuman or degrading treatment; or a serious threat to the applicant’s life due to indiscriminate violence in situations of conflict, as defined by Article 15 of theQualification Directive, ie the concept of ‘subsidiary protection’);
  3. c) the principle of non-refoulement (non-return to an unsafe country) shall be respected; and
  4. d) the possibility shall exist for the applicant to claim refugee status and to receive protection in accordance with the  Geneva Convention.

Article 38(2) establishes also several procedural guarantees. The safety of a third country must be always assessed on a case-by-case basis in order to check whether the notion is applicable to the particular circumstances of the individual applicant concerned. Moreover, the applicant must be guaranteed the right to challenge the application of the safe third country concept to his or her case, based on the fact that that country may not be safe in his or her particular circumstances. The question is whether an extremely rapid procedure as the one envisaged by Mr Samsom, would allow for a case-by-case examination of the individual circumstances of each asylum-seeker arriving in Greece from Turkey.

A further, more practical, question concerns who would be responsible for these procedures. Considering the difficulties faced by the Greek authorities in managing the current migrant flow and the established deficiencies of the Greek asylum system, it is hard to believe that the Greek authorities (despite the assistance provided by Frontex and the European Asylum Support Office, EASO) would be able to implement a systematic readmission plan as far-reaching as the one foreseen by Mr Samsom. As mentioned above, such plan must indeed be based on the individual consideration of each asylum application, otherwise it could amount to  a violation of the prohibition of collective expulsions entailed in Article 4 Protocol 4 of the ECHR. Such practice has been condemned by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in the famous Hirsi case, where the Grand Chamber found Italian authorities responsible for violating the ECHR, because they returned a group of Eritrean and Somali migrants intercepted on the high seas back to Libya without granting them the possibility to apply for asylum. The same rule obviously applies to asylum-seekers who enter the territorial waters or land on the territory of a Member State.

In addition, according to Article 46 of the Procedures Directive, asylum-seekers have the right to refer to a national court the decision to consider their application inadmissible pursuant to Article 33(2). They can stay on the territory during their initial application, and apply to a court to stay during this appeal. The Grand Chamber of the ECtHR unanimously confirmed in Hirsi (and reiterated in following case law – see for instance, Sharifi and others v Italy and Greece and Khlaifia and others v Italy) that return is only possible after the asylum-seeker has been able to claim asylum before a national authority, and to stay on the territory at least until the first instance decision on the application was made. However, it is even more doubtful that the accelerated procedure proposed by Samsom would allow for asylum-seekers to challenge the decision to return them to Turkey in front of a judicial authority and in the respect of all due procedural safeguards under the Directive and the ECHR.

However, besides the procedural issues, the crucial question here is more substantive: can Turkey be considered as a safe third country? Does Turkey comply with the requirements established by the Procedures Directive?

First, Turkey ratified the 1951 Geneva Convention and its 1967 Protocol, but maintains a geographical limitation for non-European asylum-seekers, thus recognising refugees originating only from Europe (i.e. from countries which are members of the Council of Europe). The geographical limitation provides the first barrier to accessing asylum in the country. Moreover, Syrians represent a particular case. They were at first received as ‘guests’ and then subject to a temporary protection regime, formalised by a Regulation on Temporary Protection only in October 2014 (for more details, see the updated AIDA Country Report on Turkey). The basic idea behind the temporary protection regime is to host Syrians until the conflict is over and then possibly let them return to their country of origin. As such, Syrians have a right to reside in the country but are denied the prospect of a long-term legal integration. They have access to limited rights compared to asylum-seekers in the ‘normal’ procedure, in particular as concerns access to education for children (on this point, see for instance, Human Rights Watch report) and access to employment. Although in January 2016, the Turkish government adopted adecision aimed at ensuring that Syrians can enter the labour market, the effects of this new regulation are yet to be seen in practice. Most importantly, Syrians in Turkey do not have access to refugee protection in its full sense, as enshrined in the Geneva Convention. For the reasons set out in more detail in the annex to this blog post, it is arguable that the ‘safe third country’ clause can only be interpreted as applying to countries which have ratified and fully apply the Geneva Convention.

Secondly, Turkey should respect the principle of non-refoulement, a prohibition on returning a person to a place where he or she faces a risk of persecution, torture, or inhuman or degrading treatment. However, several reports suggest that Turkey has engaged in refoulement and push-back practices throughout the years 1990s and 2000s. In particular, in November and December 2015, Human Rights Watch andAmnesty International denounced an increase in deportations, push-backs, arbitrary detentions and physical violence against asylum-seekers trying to cross the Turkish southern border coming from Syria or Iraq, or trying to enter Greece from Turkey, either by land or sea. This increase would coincide with the period leading up to and after the signing of the above-mentioned EU/Turkey deal.

Thirdly, in Turkey asylum-seekers and migrants in general, face a number of obstacles which may increase their risk of serious harm. In particular, Turkey has a record of treating asylum-seekers and refugees harshly in detention: episodes of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment have been reported by NGOs (Global Detention Project and Amnesty International among others) and condemned by the ECtHR in a series of judgments (see for instance, Abdolkhani and Karimnia v Turkey and the recent SA v Turkey, judgement of 15 December 2015). Furthermore, with reference to serious harm due to indiscriminate violence in a situation of conflict, the internal conflict between Turkey and the Kurdish rebels, which has escalated during the last year, may pose threats to the lives of asylum-seekers and refugees in the southeast of the country.

Therefore, it seems that Turkey does not fulfil many of the requirements for designation as a safe third country under the Procedures Directive. Even though the Samsom Plan does not mention this option, it seems now interesting to consider whether a similar policy could theoretically be implemented based on two different concepts entailed in the Procedures Directive, the concepts of ‘European safe third country’ and ‘first country of asylum’. The latter will be examined more in detail.

Is Turkey a ‘super-safe’ third country?

This wasn’t mentioned above, but the Asylum Procedures Directive also provides for a special category of ‘European safe third country’, which has been dubbed (sarcastically) the ‘super-safe’ third country concept. In this case, a Member State could have ‘no, or no full’ consideration of an asylum application – as foreseen by the Samsom Plan. The legal requirements for a country to be considered a ‘European safe third country’ are set out in Article 39(2) of the Directive:

  1. a) the ratification and full implementation of the Geneva Convention without any geographical limitation;
  2. b) the existence of an asylum procedure prescribed by law; and
  3. c) the ratification and full implementation of the ECHR.

Even though Turkey has in place an asylum procedure prescribed by law (Law on Foreigners and International Protection adopted in April 2013 is Turkey’s first-ever national legislation on asylum), is a party to the ECHR (even though one of the parties with the highest number of condemnations by the ECtHR for violations of this treaty) and has ratified the Geneva Convention, as mentioned above, it maintains a geographical limitation to the application of the Geneva Convention, excluding non-European asylum-seekers from the refugee status. For this reason Turkey could not even be considered a ‘European safe third country’.

Could Turkey be considered a ‘first country of asylum’?

Could then the notion of ‘first country of asylum’ apply to Turkey? Could asylum-seekers possibly be returned from Greece to Turkey based on the fact that Turkey is their first country of asylum?

Article 33(2)(b) of the Procedures Directive foresees the possibility for a Member State to deem an asylum application inadmissible if it considers a non-EU country to be a first country of asylum for a particular applicant. Article 35 establishes that a third country can be a first country of asylum in two cases:

  1. a) if the applicant has been recognised as a refugee in that country and can still avail himself or herself of that protection; or
  2. b) if the applicant otherwise enjoys sufficient protection in that country, including benefiting from the principle of non-refoulement.

Article 35 further specifies that in applying this concept Member States may take into account the legal requirements provided for by Article 38(1) – i.e. those used to establish whether a country is a safe third country. It also states that asylum-seekers ‘shall be allowed’ to argue that the principle cannot apply to their particular circumstances. Furthermore, they also have the right to appeal pursuant to Article 46 of the Procedures Directive (and stay on the territory during the application and at least at the outset of the appeal), as discussed above.

For the reasons set out in the annex to this blog post, option (a) arguably refers only to obtaining status under the Geneva Convention. Therefore Turkey cannot be considered a first country of asylum for a non-European asylum seeker, due to its geographical limitation on that Convention. On the other hand, option (b) might apply. In Turkey, indeed, non-European asylum seekers can, at least theoretically, have access to an alternative form of protection: the so-called ‘conditional refugee status’ (for applicants who would qualify as refugees under the Geneva Convention but who come from a non-European country) or the EU-inspired subsidiary protection. Moreover, as mentioned above, asylum seekers originating from Syria have access to a different form of temporary protection.

These three alternative forms of protection differ in terms of the level of rights their holders benefit from, which in all cases (and in particular in the case of Syrians benefiting from temporary protection) is lesser than the one recognised to ‘European refugees’ (for details on the content of these three alternative forms of protection, see the AIDA Country Report on Turkey). The question is: could these forms of protection be considered as ‘sufficient protection’? How can a Member State establish when protection is ‘sufficient’?

Article 35 provides two reference points, one being strictly mandatory, the other one being optional. The first one is the respect of the non-refoulement principle. Turkey is formally bound to the principle of non-refoulement, being a party to the ECHR and having incorporated the principle into Article 4 of its Law on Foreigners and International Protection as well as in Article 6 of its Temporary Protection Regulation. However, as mentioned above, the country has a historical record ofrefoulement practices and there are allegations of a recent intensification of push-backs and deportations of Syrians and other asylum-seekers. Therefore, Turkey does not seem to be fully compliant with the principle of non-refoulement in practice. But, in light of the fact that each asylum application must be examined individually based on the specific circumstances of the case, Member States might argue that the risk of non-refoulement could be assessed on a case-by-case basis in order to establish if that particular applicant enjoys sufficient protection in Turkey.

The second reference point mentioned by Article 35 is Article 38(1). In deciding whether a third country can be considered a first country of asylum, Member States may apply the same criteria they use for determining whether that country could be a safe third country. As discussed above, Turkey does not seem to comply with most of the safe third country legal requirements and, on this basis, it might be argued that in general it should not be considered a first country of asylum. However, because this is a ‘may’ clause, Member States have no obligation to apply Article 38(1) requirements to Article 35 cases and can simply ignore the possible link between the two concepts.

Therefore, although the possible application of the concept of first country of asylum to Turkey seems in general rather controversial, Member States might apply it on an individual basis, based on option (b). However, if they decide to do so, Member States’ authorities would have to conduct a case-by-case assessment, taking into due consideration the particular circumstances of each individual applicant in order to determine whether he or she enjoys sufficient protection in Turkey and does not risk being refoulé(e). As discussed above, an individual examination of all asylum claims (including the applicant’s right to appeal against a negative decision) is incompatible with the extremely rapid procedure and systematic readmission mechanism envisaged by the Samsom Plan.

A change in EU law?

The above discussion is based on current EU legislation. It is, of course, possible in principle for the EU to amend that legislation via the usual process, or arguably via means of an ‘emergency’ measure on asylum pursuant to Article 78(3) TFEU. The previous use of Article 78(3), for a ‘relocation’ system, is being challenged byHungary and Slovakia. (On the latter challenge, see discussion here; and on the general legal issues concerning that provision, see discussion here.) There might be some specific procedural issues about the use of Article 78(3) to establish the Samsom Plan, but the underlying issue is substantive: could EU law be changed (by either means) to set up a ‘return ferries’ process?

The answer is clearly: No. All EU asylum measures are subject to the general rules in Article 78(1) TFEU: ‘compliance with the principle of non-refoulement’, and acting ‘in accordance with the Geneva Convention…and other relevant treaties’. Also, all EU measures are subject to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which must be interpreted consistently with the ECHR (Article 52(3) of the Charter).

It must follow that at the very least, the ECHR case law minimum standards discussed above must apply. So no revised EU law can provide for return of people coming from Turkey without some proper individual consideration of their claim that Turkey would not be a safe country for them; and there must be a right to appeal and stay in the country at least until the first-instance decision is made on this issue. To the extent that the Samsom Plan does not respect this irreducible core of human rights protection, it would be illegal.

Conclusion

Although it is remarkable that Turkey adopted a new comprehensive EU-inspired asylum legislation and is a state party to major human rights conventions, such as the European Convention on Human Rights, the Refugee Convention and the Convention against Torture, the way it has so far implemented its international human rights obligations appears to be still faulty. In particular, the right to asylum in Turkey cannot be considered as ‘fully established’, especially because of the still largely dysfunctional asylum system and the existing inequalities in access to protection and content of protection, which at the present moment are affecting Syrian refugees in particular.

For these reasons, the Samsom Plan proposing the systematic return of all asylum seekers from Greece to Turkey in exchange for increased refugee resettlement in Europe, appears to be not only very difficult to implement (due to both legal and practical obstacles), but also based on the doubtful presumption that Turkey may be (soon) considered a safe third country for refugees and asylum-seekers.

Furthermore, it is unfortunate that the EU and Turkey did not agree to fully apply the Geneva Convention for Turkey, and that there are no mechanisms of accountability in place for the EU institutions to report either in general upon Turkey’s compliance with international human rights standards or in particular to explain exactly how the EU’s money is being spent.

Barnard & Peers: chapter 26

JHA4: chapter I:5

Photo credit: insidethegames.biz

**Emanuela Roman is a PhD candidate in Human Rights at the University of Palermo and junior researcher at the Forum of International and European Research on Immigration (FIERI). This article was written during the period she is spending as a visiting researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Faculty of Law, Migration Law Section. Emanuela would like to thank all her colleagues at the VU Migration Law Section, in particular Theodore Baird, Evelien Brouwer, Thomas Spijkerboer and Hemme Batijes for their precious comments and advise. The sole responsibility for the content of this article lies with the authors.

Annex I

Interpreting the ‘safe third country’ clause in the Procedures DirectiveAs noted above, Article 38 of the Asylum Procedures Directive says that in a safe third country it must be possible for the applicant ‘to request refugee status and … to receive protection in accordance with the Geneva Convention’. In my view, this can only refer to States which have ratified and fully apply the Convention; therefore it cannot apply to Turkey. I am grateful for a discussion with Daniel Thym on this issue – although I should note that he holds the opposite opinion.

First of all, this interpretation is supported by the legislative history of the text, which is set out in detail in Annex II. The original draft in 2002 made expressly clear that the clause could apply even if a State had not ratified the Convention. During negotiations that text was revised so that the final wording states that it must be possible to get status ‘in accordance with’ the Convention. Attempts by several Member States to make it clear that alternative types of protection besides full Convention refugee status could also trigger the clause were not successful.

Secondly, the ordinary meaning of the words ‘in accordance with’ in English is ‘in compliance with’, although the other language versions are equally valid. This is confirmed by the words ‘refugee status’: the full title of the Geneva Convention is the ‘Convention on the Status of Refugees’. How can one apply for ‘refugee status…in accordance with the Geneva Convention’ if the state concerned has not ratified, or does not fully apply, the ‘[Geneva] Convention on the Status of Refugees’? While the definitions clause refers to Member States as regards the definitions of ‘refugee’ and ‘refugee status’, this logically cannot be intended to apply to Article 38, since that Article only refers to applications made in non-EU states.

Thirdly, the a contrario rule supports this interpretation. Where the drafters of the Directive wanted to refer to the possibility of applying for an alternative form of protection, they did so expressly, as in Article 35(b) of the Directive. Admittedly Article 39, which refers more clearly to the geographical reservation of Turkey as a (failed) condition for the ‘super-safe’ countries rule to apply, points in the opposite direction. But to the extent that these two a contrario analyses simply cancel each other out, the interpretation in line with the legislative history and ordinary meaning should apply.

Similarly ‘recognised as a refugee’ under Article 35(a) of the Directive should be interpreted to refer to the Convention refugee status, in the absence of any indication that any alternative meaning is intended. However, Article 35(b) does clearly provide for an alternative option of designating a state as a ‘first country of asylum’ due to the existence of other forms of protection.

Annex II: Legislative history of the ‘safe third country’ clause

  • Commission proposal, 2002: explicitly provides in an Annex that a ‘safe third country’ can be a country which has not ratified the Geneva Convention
  • Council doc 6929/03 – a note indicates that the Council will start work looking at ‘safe’ country concepts. This plan is soon dropped; the Council looks first at Arts 1-22 instead.
  • Council doc 7214/03 – Annex unchanged at this point, no MS comments
  • Council docs 10064/03 and 10456/03 – ditto
  • Council doc 10722/03 – minor amendment to annex to state that Cartagena declaration countries must have a procedure compliant with the principles of the Geneva Convention
  • Council doc 11108/03 – no change
  • Council doc 11575/03 – annex shortened a little
  • Council doc 12281/03 – annex shortened significantly
  • Council doc 12734/03 – annex is simplified, but still provides for rules (same as in previous text) on when a ‘safe third country’ can be a country which has not ratified the Geneva Convention
  • Council doc 13369/03 – same text, but Germany now has a reservation linked to the ‘super-safe’ country clause, and Finland says the relevant clause could be deleted
  • Council doc 13901/03 – unchanged
  • Council doc 13902/03 – unchanged. The Presidency notes that delegations have inflexible positions on these provisions.
  • Council doc 14020/03 – ditto
  • Council doc 14182/03 – issue sent to the Council
  • Council doc 14330/03 – text unchanged
  • Council doc 14686/03 – text unchanged. But Spain suggests deleting the annex and having a short description of ‘safe third country’ in the main text, which is vague as to whether the state in question must have ratified the Convention
  • Council doc 14686/03 add 1 – Presidency proposes to delete the annex and have a short description of ‘safe third country’ in the main text, which only mentions the Convention as regards non-refoulement
  • Council doc 15153/03 – clause now in the main text, annex deleted. No change re Convention issue. DE still has reservation linked to ‘super-safe’ clause
  • Council docs 15153/03 rev 1 and 2 – amended to refer to ‘request recognition and be granted protection by that country or by the UNHCR as a refugee’. Spain wants to delete ‘as a refugee’. BE, NL and FI want to add express clause requiring ratification of the Convention and/or observation of the Convention. DE reservation is gone.
  • Council doc 15198/03 – unchanged
  • Council doc 15198/03 add 1 – UK wants to delete the whole sub-para
  • Council doc 6871/04 – redraft adds clause separate from main criteria for ‘safe third country’: ‘…Member States shall have regard to whether the third country has ratified the Geneva Convention…’ when assessing the application of those criteria. The clause in the main criteria now reads ‘request and be granted protection as a refugee in that country’. This deletes the reference to the UNHCR and makes it clear that it must be the country which grants refugee status.
  • Council doc 6954/04 – unchanged, but UK joined by EL/ES/NL/AT want to add the words ‘or other forms of international protection’ to the criteria
  • Council doc 7183/04 – unchanged, NL no longer supporting the UK position
  • Council doc 7184/04 – unchanged
  • Council doc 7184/1/04 – unchanged. UK and ES now want to change to ‘or another form of status which otherwise offers sufficient protection’ to the criteria. This is similar to final ‘first country of asylum’ clause.
  • Council doc 7484/04 – due to deadlock, Presidency proposes dropping clause on ‘request and be granted protection as a refugee’ to get a deal.
  • Council doc 7729/04 – ditto
  • Council doc 8166/04 – redraft retains ‘request and be granted protection as a refugee’ clause, drops requirement to take into account whether third State has ratified Convention
  • Council doc 8158/04 – same text and reservation as in 7184/1/04
  • Council doc 8413/04 – text amended to read:  ‘the possibility exists to requestrefugee status and, if found to be a refugee, to receive protection in accordance with the Geneva Convention’. UK and Spanish proposal rejected – link to Geneva Convention in fact made explicit instead
  • Council doc 8415/04 – as before, except the UK seeks to amend to read ‘in accordance with the principles of the Geneva Convention’. This is clearly rejected in the final version.

    • Posted by Steve Peers 

Protecting civilians in armed conflict International framework and challenges

EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT RESEARCH SERVICE BRIEFING (January 2016)

Author: Carmen-Cristina Cîrlig

SUMMARY

In today’s armed conflicts, whether international or intra-state, the vast majority of casualties are now civilians. Increasingly, civilians are victims of deliberate attacks and other serious violations by parties to a conflict – both states and non-state armed groups, despite the existence of strict legal rules intended to spare civilians from the effects of hostilities: the principles of international humanitarian law, of international human rights law and refugee law.
The lack of compliance with these norms, as well as the United Nations Security Council’s inability to take action to protect civilians in some specific cases, reflects the key concerns regarding the protection of civilians affected by armed conflicts worldwide. Moreover, specific protection concerns relate to the situation of women, children and displaced persons.
Besides this international legal framework, another related concept has garnered significant support internationally in the past decade: the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), meant to apply only in cases of atrocity crimes. However, R2P remains controversial, given the challenge of adequate implementation, particularly with regard to its military intervention aspects.
Notwithstanding the many challenges with regard to protecting civilians in armed conflict, the European Union is a strong promoter of international humanitarian principles and of R2P, and other protection-related issues are consistently among its priorities.

Armed Conflicts

 

Trends in armed conflicts and impact on civilians…

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