Introduction

Almost fifteen years after the beginning of intergovernmental cooperation in asylum and immigration matters, the establishment of a common European asylum system has become a priority in the European Union. With the free movement of persons in the single market, member states have effectively lost their sovereign discretion over admission, residence and expulsion of Community nationals, empowering these individuals with equal rights enforced by a supranational authority through the European Commission and the European Court of Justice. Coupled with the multiplication of migration flows world-wide and the end of East-West ideological antagonisms, the normative core of the asylum concept has become increasingly blurred. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book analyses the scope and the limits of an evolving common European refugee policy from the beginnings of intergovernmental cooperation in the mid-1980s until today.