The assessment of vulnerable asylum seekers’ rights at the external borders of the European Union

Résumé

In European asylum law, the legal notion of vulnerability carries with it a particular and protective impact as it aims to identify the correlated special needs and to derive State obligations from them. The protection and care that these special needs require are hardly addressed at the borders; thus, the trend towards the development and streamlining of border procedures at the external borders of the European Union entails that the vulnerable asylum seekers are less likely to be identified and taken care of. Furthermore, this border reinforcement outweighs the protection of asylum seekers’ rights, and is particularly true for those vulnerable. The border procedures foreseen by the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, although encompassing measures for vulnerable groups, are in fact incompatible with the complete and systematic identification and care of these groups, and, in this regard, are far from corresponding to the protective standard set out by the Common European Asylum System. The legal basis, that has been slowly developed and articulated in this respect and thereby allowing for a growing legal incidence of the notion of vulnerability, is now largely questioned.