eliza berkowska

Contact: eberkowska2gmail.com

 Qualifications: Law Degree (2002) and MA in European Law (2003) at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland,  LLM (2007) Human Rights and Democratization at Inter-University of Human Rights and Democratization, Venice, Italy.

EU and non-citizens. Reconciling security concerns and human rights protection.

This research will critically analyse the development of EU policy and criteria for admission/removal relevant to asylum seekers and inward migrants in order to assess the impact of security concerns on these standards, especially since 11 September 2001. The primary objective of the study is to examine the relationship between EU asylum and migration law and policy, human rights and the principle of territorial sovereignty in the context of state/region security concerns and to establish the extent to which the principle of territorial sovereignty has to be conceived in a way that is compatible with existing international and national human rights obligations of nation states and the EU.

The study will explore the tensions between human rights law on the one hand, and the perceived right of nation states and the EU to control access to their territory on the other. Asylum and migration both highlight the tension that exists between the paradigm of territorial sovereignty and the paradigm of human rights. If democracy is bound up with the complex relationship between political representation, human rights protection and rules of law, it seems that migrants and asylum seekers pose an important test of the democratic character of the EU and its member states. 

While the EU and its member states have a legitimate interest in ensuring national and regional security, they also have domestic and international obligations to protect the rights of all those individuals subject to their jurisdiction. The developmental trends in EU law and policy on migration and asylum appear to suggest that there is a growing tendency to rely on and attempt to expand the discretionary powers built into the rights-based migration and asylum regimes in international law to escape from human rights control mechanisms. This takes many forms, including preventive and deterrent measures that violate non-citizens’ fundamental human rights and reinforce the security paradigm. This thesis will focus on the changing relationship between migration/asylum and security on the one hand, and between state and individual, on other hand and argue for the promotion and protection of fundamental rights notwithstanding perceived security concerns.

The research will consider the use of existing mechanisms and structures in domestic and international human rights law to reconcile the competing principles of territorial sovereignty and human rights protection in times of apparent security crisis. In this respect, the thesis will focus on the clarification of non-citizens’ rights in the state sovereignty context on the one hand, and need to ensure that all alleged security-based exceptions made to the ’normal’ asylum/migration process must be clearly justified. The study will also make recommendations on how the EU and nation states  can more effectively manage asylum and migration by means of such reconciliation

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