On Aug. 1, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued a ruling on the right to political asylum with far-reaching implications for national constitutional law, which separates legislative from judicial powers. According to the ruling, it is no longer up to the executive or the legislative alone to decide whether a country of origin is considered “safe"; instead, the courts shall decide, case by case. This means that the court can arbitrarily rule on the basis of the general EU definition of a “safe country,” i.e., a country where citizens’ rights are protected in all areas of the country. (Such a definition, if applied rigorously, could exclude all member countries of the EU!)
Mario Esposito, professor of Constitutional Law at the LUISS University in Rome, commented in an interview with the daily La Verità, that “the right to emigrate, which by the way is not given in all nations, cannot become the right to settle in the territory of another state. We cannot have the paradox that, if I do not feel to be represented in my country because some of my needs, or preferences are not fulfilled as I want, and therefore I do not feel sufficiently protected, I can go to another country and pretend to stay there. This means that the entire scheme of nation states, of borders, is gone. In other words, the entire dimension of stateness disappears.”
