European Case Law on Asylum Matters: Interrelation and Interdependence of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union

The Council of Europe and the European Union are major players and partners in the domain of policy-shaping strategies on the European continent, with significant and ever-growing impact on international community as a whole. Although the ratio and ideas behind their establishment were not the same (economic versus humanistic), they have, over the time, acquired a similar attitude towards a number of legal issues, including protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Unlike the Council of Europe, which perceived human rights as a cornerstone of its founding pillars, the EU took a longer way to incorporate them in its priority areas. The latter shift was, however, rapid, and these days one is witnessing a large-scale cooperation instituted between respective regional organisations with the aim of creating a human-rights-friendly environment. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on one particular segment of their cooperation in the field of human rights protection-asylum law. For the fact that Europe attracts a large contingency of people looking for better life and new beginnings, asylum matters have moved swiftly to the forefront of the Council of Europe and EU standard-setting policies. Nevertheless, the existence of two parallel legal regimes has not led to an inconsistent asylum policy. In order to illustrate the Council of Europe and EU distinctive approaches to asylum, as well as their manifold interplay in the respective arena, the paper summarises the most notable pieces of their legal and regulatory framework and offers an insight into some of the leading asylum cases brought before the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union.