Madeline Garlick

The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and Immigration and Asylum Law

The tension between a rights-based approach to immigration and asylum policy and states’ desire to control their borders and populations as an essential aspect of their sovereignty is well-known. Inevitably, when the European Union (EU) institutions finally, after decades of discussion, decided to draw up a European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights, immigration and asylum matters proved to be controversial issues. With the enhanced legal effect of the Charter resulting from the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, and the subsequent pre-eminence of the Charter in the relevant case law of the Court of Justice, the Charter is now playing a significant role in the development of EU immigration and asylum law.