2021

Anniversaries are an occasion to look back and to reassert the importance of the person celebrating a jubilee. The same holds for the Geneva Convention that was signed on 28 July 1951 and is often celebrated as the ‘magna carta’ of international refugee law and serves as a point of reference in contemporary debates. In an interview with the podcast of the public radio broadcaster ‘Deutschlandfunk – Der Tag’ (in German), Daniel Thym presents the achievements and limitations of the Refugee…

In its Annual Report for 2021, the German Expert Council on Integration and Migration (SVR) asks in how far German society and politics accept and treat diversity as a new normality in diverse sectors such as the labour market, political participation, or cultural institutions. Daniel Thym contributed to the Report as the Vice Chairperson of the Expert Council. Despite its focus on migration-related pluralism, the Report recognises that the migration status is one variant among others…

Allegations of pushbacks by the Greek coastguard and the role of the EU border agency Frontex have been discussed controversially for some months. The European Parliament set up a scrutiny group to shed light on what happened and to assess whether the pushbacks were illegal or not. Daniel Thym appeared as a witness in a hearing of the committee whose recording can be found online in the multimedia centre of the European Parliament. Written comments for a broader audience can be found in the blog…

National parliaments lose autonomous decision-making powers as a result of the political choice to conclude the Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the United Kingdom as an EU-only agreement. It is only the second association agreement, besides the one with Kosovo, for which this solution was chosen. Daniel Thym explains the tricky questions of competence the choice of legal basis involves and rebuts criticism of a violation of the case law of the German constitutional court in a hearing of the…