More laws, less law: The European Union's New Pact on Migration and Asylum and the fragmentation of “asylum seeker” status

This article discusses the implications of elements of the New Pact on Migration and Asylum from the perspective of fragmentation of “asylum seeker” status. Different parts of the legislative package tabled by the European Commission in September 2020 call into question the EU law view of asylum seekers as a single, indivisible category of protected persons. The retreat of EU law at external borders, on the one hand, leads to the creation of a “hollow asylum seeker” status, while the multidimensional expansion of border procedures and corollary deprivation of liberty risks defeating hard-fought safeguards on procedural presumptions and detention. Conversely, the enactment of a “privileged asylum seeker” status through the newly introduced “immediate protection” regime appears to be a measure with pragmatic potential for needed solutions and decisive EU steps towards group refugee status determination, albeit formulated in such a way as to exacerbate fragmentation and complexity.