Dreptul la azil în Uniunea Europeană. Repere
Right to asylum within the European Union. Guide marks

Summary/Abstract: The right to asylum is one of the fundamental human rights. It is guaranteed under the norms of the Convention of Geneva of 28 July 1951 on the status of refugees, the Protocol on the status of refugees of 31 January 1967, in conformity with the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. By granting asylum, States have the responsibility to treat the persons to whom asylum was granted in conformity with the general principles of international law and protect these persons for humanitarian reasons. As a result of the ever increasing number of persons who apply for international protection in the European Union, the EU Member States agreed that there is need for solutions in response to this challenge. Thus, they decided to create a European asylum system, one capable to provide better conditions for persons seeking for asylum at the level of the European Union. The activities needed for the system to be created were initiated immediately after the Treaty of Amsterdam had come into force, in May 1999, based on the guidelines established by the Tampere European Council. The European asylum system was developed in two steps. The first step started with the Tampere European Council and ended in 2005. It consisted in the elaboration of a number of directions regarding the asylum, and in the strengthening of the cooperation among States. The second step started with the Hague Programme (adopted on 5 November 2004 by the heads of States and governments), which established the year 2010 as deadline for the achievement of the system’s main objectives by means of instruments and measures meant to institute common asylum procedures and a uniform status. However, the Treaty of Lisbon, which came into force on 1 December 2009, amended the legal framework defining the asylum policy, which entailed postponing till 2012 the accomplishment of the second step of the common European asylum system, a period of time devoted to the elimination of the differences among asylum systems of the Member States.

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