Müge Dalkiran

Beginning from the late 1990s, with the purpose of establishing Common European Asylum Policies (CEAS), EU Member States started the adoption of a number of legislative reforms to harmonize their asylum systems. While national asylum regimes were largely influenced by the Europeanization process, the so-called “refugee crisis” in 2015 created a new paradigm for the EU governance of migration in which ad-hoc responses have become more prominent as a response to the emergency situation. The impacts of these ad-hoc responses were not limited to the emergency situations but had a larger impact on the EU governance. This project aims to analyze how the local/national ad-hoc practices reverse the Europeanization process in the context of EU migration governance.

Greece, as a frontier member state of the European Union, has been drawn into the centre of discussions regarding the Europeanization process of its asylum system and its practices in migration control at the maritime and land borders with Turkey. This paper aims to provide an overview of the legal landscape of the asylum regime in the maritime border zone between Turkey and Greece, and to argue how it impacts the rights and livelihoods of asylum seekers.