2020

The external borders of the European Union are in the spotlight again. Daniel Thym discusses the validity of arguments the Greek violate human rights and EU asylum law in two interviews (in German) with FAZ Einspruch (‘Mit Humanität und Härte’) and ZEIT Online (‘Deutschland macht eigentlich das Gleiche wie die Griechen’). One important element of the legal assessment is a landmark judgment of the Grand Chamber of the ECtHR, which found recently that the Spanish practice of ‘hot expulsions’ to be compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. This outcome was met with disappointment by NGOs and many migration law experts. Daniel Thym analyses the ruling in a blogpost (in English) for the Verfassungsblog and the EU Immigration and Asylum Law Blog of the Odysseus Network. He shows that the judgment is defined by an inbuilt ambiguity between restrictionist tendencies and dynamic elements that raise important follow-up questions of great practical and conceptual importance.