Article

Another parochial decision? : the common European asylum system at the crossroad between IHL and refugee law in Diakité

Claudio Matera

• Questions of international law : zoom in, Vol. 12, 2015, p. 3-20

English

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With its decision on the Diakité case, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) seemingly delivered another judgment in which it disconnected the EU legal order from the international one, when it held that the definition of armed conflict provided in international humanitarian law is not designed to identify the situations in which international protection ex Articles 2(e) and 15 of the Qualification Directive are applicable. This contribution assesses the extent to which the decision of the CJEU can be interpreted as another example of the parochial attitude the CJEU has displayed when called upon to apply notions or rules stemming from international law for the purpose of clarifying the scope of an internal (EU) provision. This contribution offers a short overview of the positions that IHL and international refugee law have within the EU legal system (section 2), before turning to the analysis of the Diakité affair in which the CJEU found itself at the crossroad between IHL and international refugee law for the purpose of applying the Qualification Directive (section 3). Section 4 will then look into the institutional and substantive consequences of the CJEU decision in Diakité and with some conclusions being drawn in section 5.

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