The unprecedented arrival of almost 2 million people on European territory between 2015 and 2016 exposed the vulnerabilities of the EU’s Common European Asylum System (CEAS). Dating back to the 1990s, the CEAS aims to homogenise the policies and procedures for the reception of asylum seekers or subsidiary protection of Member States while ensuring respect for human rights, based on the full application of the Geneva Convention (European Commission, 2024).

In 2020, the European Commission announced a comprehensive reform affecting all CEAS instruments, aiming to implement a new system capable of providing effective management at EU level, while circumventing criticism from left-wing parties, NGOs and civil society for the recurrent humanitarian crises in the Mediterranean. However, the New Pact on Migration and Asylum continues to raise discrepancies between Member States, highlighting the latent divisions between blocs within the EU, as well as the inability to establish a credible mechanism of inter-European solidarity.

This case study looks at the evolution of the policy cycle of the CEAS, its limitations and the divisions between Member States. It does so by focusing on three temporal divisions: the early life of the CEAS until the so-called 'migration crisis' of 2015, the time interval between 2015 and 2016, and the latest phase comprising the communication of the New Pact on Migration and Asylum until its full adoption in 2024.