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EU: Statewatch Analysis: The Revised Asylum Procedures Directive: Keeping Standards Low by Steve Peers, Professor of Law, Law School, University of Essex

01 May 2012

Offers a thorough legal analysis of the Council's current position on the revised asylum procedures directive and concludes:

- The proposed Council draft would provide for a fairly modest increase in standards relating to asylum procedures with the most important improvements from the June 2011 revised proposal removed or watered down.

- There are some disturbing reductions of current standards as regards (surreally) the possibility to consider an application as withdrawn even though it was never made (if it is not made as soon as possible), and the power to reintroduce a 'super-safe' third country rule allowing for no consideration of an asylum application at all - a manifest breach of the Geneva Convention, international human rights law, and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

- Member States would still be able to accelerate the consideration of a significant number of applications and in so doing could deny the applicant legal aid, access to the information used against him or her and a copy of the report of the interview during first-instance proceedings; and they could then prevent the applicant from staying on the territory during the appeal. The net result would be a grossly unfair procedure.

See: Full analysis (pdf)