ABSTRACT
The ‘right to seek asylum’ is an inalienable and universal human right, embodied in Article 14 of the 1948 Universal Declaration. However, it is a principle that the democratically elected governments of Europe feel they can no longer stand by. This is despite ‘asylum’ re-appearing in the 2003 Draft European Union Constitution, once again as a ‘fundamental human right’.2 For an elected political leader to promise that 50 per cent fewer people will be exercising this human right in a European country seems to undermine the very concept of a ‘Charter of Fundamental Rights of the Union’. Perhaps the intention is for the remaining 50 per cent to exercise this human right elsewhere or perhaps not at all. There has never been a right to ‘receive’ asylum, but to remove the universal right of ‘claiming’ it (i.e. access to some determination system) removes one of the minimum safeguards against human rights abuse and persecution. The European asylum debate has become a political obsession that in part relates to a failing asylum system, but is also heavily coded and touches on deeper feelings about immigration and race.
