ABSTRACT
The Common European Asylum System (CEAS) is neither truly common nor a system.1 This chapter outlines the content of the legal measures that fall under the CEAS, and its structural problems. It is set against the backdrop of the arrival in 2015 of refugees and migrants to EU Member States dubbed variously the ‘refugee crisis’, ‘migration crisis’ or even the ‘Mediterranean crisis’. Evidently, a defining feature was an increase in the numbers of people arriving by sea.2 Those arriving were mainly refugees with international protection needs, fleeing Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan (making up 90 per cent of arrivals).3 The main entry route in 2015 became the sea route from Turkey to Greece. As Fargues argues, talk of ‘mixed flows’ of refugees and migrants became increasingly inapt in this context.4
