The research project intends to analyze, firstly, the current EU regulatory integration on international protection, retracing the most important stages of the communitarization of the immigration and asylum policy within the Union and correlating the latter to a wider legal aspect such as the multilevel protection of fundamental rights.
In this context, the profiles of greatest interest are: the determination of the country competent to examine the asylum application as governed by the Dublin Regulation and balanced with the sovereignty clause; the definition of the categories of subjects included in the notion of international protection; the EU’s SAR zone and the “safe third country” concept.
It is worth noting that the humanitarian emergency of 2015 requires us to question the efficiency of the initiatives and legal instruments adopted by the European Union, in order to study a better migration policy on asylum aimed at guaranteeing respect for the fundamental rights of international protection applicants and fair sharing of responsibility among the States of the Union.
Consequently, it seems worth studying not only the EU management and control of irregular immigration but also its external dynamics. As a result, the second part of the research will be focused on the external dimension of the EU migration policy: the support to host and transit countries through existing Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) missions and operations, including on border management and fighting traffickers and smugglers; the use of financial tools such as the Emergency Trust Fund for Africa or the Syria Trust Fund in addition to other broader programs, such as the European Neighborhood Instrument (ENI), the Development Cooperation Instrument (DCI), the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) and the Instrument contributing to Stability and Peace (IcSP); the mechanisms and agreements that affect in particular Niger and Rwanda, as regards the role played by UNHCR and IOM on the relocation of migrants via the mandate of the European Commission.

Finally, in order to identify some best practices, a comparison will be made between the external dimension of the asylum policies of the EU and Australia – as regards the management of the SAR area – and the United States – in terms of management of irregular migration flows on land border.