The EU’s response to Covid-19 between sovereignty, public health and fundamental rights: Some remarks on the functioning of the Schengen area and the Common European Asylum System

This paper examines the European Union's response to the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on the common systems of asylum and migration governance while questioning the delicate balance between sovereignties, public health needs and migrants fundamental rights. If public health reasons provide a legal justification for the measures taken, the measures introduced by the EU Member States also produced various side effects. On the one hand, the multiplicity and variety of unilateral national reactions contributed to the already fragmented and flawed implementation of the Schengen and the Dublin frameworks. On the other hand, some of those measures significantly affected fundamental rights of migrants, including asylum seekers. Responding to these findings will require, in the short term, a strict control of fundamental rights by the Courts and, in the long term, a reconstruction of the common policies both on the free movement of persons and on asylum and migration.