Daniel Thym

• Professor
• Professor (Full) at University of Konstanz

German abstract: Sichere Drittstaatsmodelle sind mit dem Grundgesetz, der Genfer Flüchtlingskonvention und den Menschenrechten vereinbar. Diese verlangen einen wirksamen Schutz, ohne vorzugeben, wer diesen wo gewährleistet. Sichere Drittstaaten müssen das Refoulementverbot vollumfänglich beachten und angemessene Lebensbedingungen nach international...

This book has been written to help readers navigate the often Byzantine European rulebook on migration at a time when it has become increasingly difficult to keep an oversight. More than three dozen directives and regulations are discussed throughout this volume, together with numerous court judgments, international treaties, reform proposals, and...

Mit der Staatsangehörigkeit wird man in rechtlicher Hinsicht ein vollwertiges Mitglied eines Landes. Deshalb ist es richtig, anlässlich der anstehenden Reform darüber zu diskutieren, was „Deutsch“ heutzutage heißt, auch wenn die Einbürgerung im Vergleich zum Daueraufenthaltsrecht, das eingebürgerte Menschen zuvor besitzen, nur noch wenige praktisch...

Aus dem vielfältigen interdisziplinären Kontext ergeben sich zwei Leitfragen für die rechtswissenschaftliche Diskussion, die eine Antwort auf die übergeordnete juristische Thematik ermitteln helfen, welche Ausdrucksformen des Rassismus von den Diskriminierungsverboten erfasst werden und welche nicht. Gelten diese auch für kulturalisierte Formen des...

Im Koalitionsvertrag verständigte sich die neue Bundesregierung auf die Einführung einer „Chancenkarte auf Basis eines Punktesystems“ als zweite Säule der Erwerbsmigration. Das klingt vielversprechend und verlangt dennoch vom Gesetzgeber zahlreiche Weichenstellungen. Es bestehen nämlich unterschiedliche Möglichkeiten, wie das künftige Punktesystem...

b>Die Europäische Union ist eingebettet in einen weiten Kreis von Organisationen. Verdichtete Kooperationen in Gestalt der sektoriellen Abkommen EU-Schweiz, der SAA, der Östlichen Partnerschaft, des Assoziierungsabkommens EU-Türkei und der Mittelmeerunion ergänzen das Bild. Das Handbuch „Europäisches Organisations- und Verfassungsrecht“ erfasst d...

Timely and profound collection of high-quality contributions, written by experts from across Europe, on the ongoing policy debate on the reform of Common European Asylum System. Contributions combine an in-depth presentation with a style of argument that addresses a broader audience: fellow academics, students and PhD researchers, practitioners, an...

Timely and profound collection of high-quality contributions, written by experts from across Europe, on the ongoing policy debate on the reform of Common European Asylum System. Contributions combine an in-depth presentation with a style of argument that addresses a broader audience: fellow academics, students and PhD researchers, practitioners, an...

b>Die Außenbeziehungen der EU sind durch den Lissaboner Vertrag nicht nur institutionell verankert, sondern haben Brüssel auch zu einem Ernst zu nehmenden Akteur auf der internationalen Bühne werden lassen. Gleichzeitig sind, je nach Politikfeld, unterschiedlichste Arrangements von Kompetenzen, Organen und Handlungsformen entstanden, oft überlager...

In der öffentlichen Diskussion erlebt derzeit ein Begriff eine Renaissance, der in Deutschland bisher gemieden wurde: »Rassismus“. Daher müssen sich Rechtswissenschaft und Gesellschaft dringend der Frage stellen, welche verschiedenen Erscheinungsformen des Rassismus es gibt und inwiefern diese von den juristischen Diskriminierungsverboten im deutsc...

Legal implications of the provision are subject to some controversy. ECJ judgments indicate that specific rules of secondary legislation have to be applied as legal speciales in regular circumstances, even though Member States can invoke the provision to justify non-compliance with secondary legislation, mirroring the public policy exceptions to th...

A standing committee shall be set up within the Council in order to ensure that operational cooperation on internal security is promoted and strengthened within the Union. Without prejudice to Article 240, it shall facilitate coordination of the action of Member States’ competent authorities. Representatives of the Union bodies, offices and agencie...

The political objective in establishing an internal market as an “area without internal frontiers” (Article 26.2 TFEU) supported the abolition of border controls as a “constant and concrete reminder to the ordinary citizen that the construction of a real European Community is far from complete”. After initial discussions on the feasibility of supra...

Cooperation on asylum began as a so-called flanking measure that compensated states for their loss of control options following the abolition of border controls within the Schengen area. The Schengen Implementing Convention of 1990 contained a first set of rules on the responsibility for processing applications for asylum. In parallel, all MSs, inc...

Two controversial rulings of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) deserve global attention, since they declined to scrutinize on human rights grounds the prevalent move towards enhanced border controls and externalization practices that define European asylum law and policy at this juncture. In ND and NT, judges deemed th...

Initial response to the Covid-19 pandemic capitalised on symbolism of national belong-ing. Against this background, borders soon took centre stage in the effort to tackle the spread of the virus during the spring of 2020 with Member States enforcing drastic restrictions to inter-state mobility, both at internal and external Schengen borders. As the...

Not a day passes without political discussion of immigration. Reception of immigrants, their treatment, strategies seeing to their inclusion, management of migration flows, limitation of their numbers, the selection of immigrants; all are ongoing dialogues. European Societies, Migration, and the Law shows that immigrants, regardless of their indivi...

Five decades of interaction between the Bundesverfassungsgericht and the Court of Justice – Reversal of the Solange decisions – Jurisdictional upgrade of the Charter under domestic constitutional law – Continuity of the ultra vires and constitutional identity caveats – Differences between the First and Second Senate in the approach towards EU law –...

Most interdisciplinary analyses intuitively depict the judiciary as an actor promoting post- or transnational conceptions of membership and equality in contemporary debates about citizenship and immigration. A qualitative survey of prominent judgments of two powerful supranational tribunals on five central themes identifies an intriguing twist in t...

Migration verändert die deutsche Gesellschaft und hilft der Verfassungslehre, theoretische Vorannahmen offenzulegen, die häufig nur mitgedacht werden. Dies gilt auch für die öffentliche Wertschätzung des Grundgesetzes, das häufig als Grundlage des gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalts beschworen wird. Es ist dies ein anspruchsvolles Unterfangen, das von...

Die fadengehäftete Broschur verbindet politische Grundsatzfragen mit rechtstechnischen Einzelheiten, um auf einer mittleren Abstraktionsebene die zentralen Konstruktionsschwächen des deutschen, europäischen und internationalen Flüchtlingsrechts aufzuzeigen. Anhand aktueller Streitfragen zur Flüchtlingsdefinition, der Reiseroute sowie der internatio...

While the technical details of immigration and asylum legislation remain the domain of a comparatively narrow field of experts, debates about nationality law often cause widespread attention within domestic academic circles. The latest reform was a case in point: in 2019, the government proposed depriving terrorist fighters of German nationality (p...

The Court of Justice is a central actor. It is the subject of many studies, most of which concentrate on the internal market or citizenship. By contrast, the role of judges in migration law is rarely discussed, although the policy field is politically contested and features prominently in recent case law. That is why this contribution takes a bird'...

Berlin versteht sich als europäische Metropole. Ein politisches Drama nach dem Modell des Brexit-Durcheinanders wäre in der deutschen Hauptstadt undenkbar. Doch in der jüngsten stadtpolitischen Diskussion kommt Europa nicht vor. Die Enteignungsdebatte dreht sich um den obskuren Artikel 15 des Grundgesetzes, der noch nie angewandt wurde. Dabei gibt...

Many experts of EU migration law deal with ECJ judgments on a regular basis, but they rarely reflect on how individual rulings on diverse themes such as asylum, family reunification or return relate to each other. This article fills that gap and presents a horizontal analysis of 155 judgments combining quantitative and qualitative findings. Our sta...

Ausgehend von einem doppelten historischen und politischen Argument präsentiert der besprochene Essay von Rosi Braidotti die europäische Bürgerschaft als progressives Projekt, das sich Nationalismus, Rassismus und Fremdenfeindlichkeit entgegenstelle. Als theoretisches Plädoyer mag man dies verteidigen können, allein die Rückbindung an die Europäisc...

If we want the Court of Justice of the European Union to employ citizens’ rights to foster a supranational vision of justice, we have to move beyond a minimalist reading of free movement as correcting unwelcome outcomes at the national level. What would be required instead is a vision of social justice for the Union as a whole, not only for those m...

This contribution argues that Brexit could facilitate legal control over the entry and stay of EU citizens, but might paradoxically render control of immigration of third country nationals, including asylum seekers, more difficult compared to the status quo. The first section examines this irony with regard to third country nationals, the second se...

Die Territorialstaaten europäischer Prägung sind im Ausgangspunkt immobil und das öffentliche Recht bildet dies ab. Für Migration besteht ein Leitbild der Sesshaftigkeit, das als normativer Normalfall im Sinn eines „sedentären Bias“ unser Denken lenkt. Die Identifikation des Leitbilds besitzt eine analytische Stoßrichtung, weil die Grundannahme der...

Während der Flüchtlingskrise verwiesen politische Akteure regelmäßig auf das Recht, um, je nach Standpunkt, die Willkommenskultur oder eine Grenzschließung argumentativ zu stützen. Allerdings wurde der Umgang mit der für viele fremden Materie des Migrationsrechts durch deren europarechtliche Überlagerung erschwert. Dies gilt nicht zuletzt für die D...

The ‘unity dogma’ has long characterized European law discourse. In many of its landmark judgments, the European Court of Justice had recourse to the ‘unity argument’—such as in Costa v ENEL, where the Court stated that ‘the executive force of Community law cannot vary from one state to another … without jeopardizing the attainment of the objective...

The ‘unity dogma’ has long characterised European law discourse. In many of its landmark judgments, the European Court of Justice had recourse to the ‘unity argument’ – such as in Costa vs. E.N.E.L., where the Court rightly stated that ‘the executive force of Community law cannot vary from one state to another … without jeopardising the attainment...

German Abstract: Im liberalen Verfassungsstaat werden Veränderungen häufig als lineare Fortschrittsgeschichte von der Staatensouveränität zu den Menschenrechten erzählt. Eine solche binäre Kodierung übersieht im Fall des Migrationsrechts, dass sich dessen Zielrichtung zugleich inhaltlich verschob. Dies Veränderungen zeigt der Beitrag für die Bundes...

DCU Brexit Institute - Working paper N. 7 - 2018-------Debates about differentiated integration are full of rhetoric extremes: while proponents often present it as a magic potion allowing the EU to thrive, critics portray the (non)participation of some Member States in selected policy projects as a deadly poison that lays the axe unto the roots of...

German Abstract: Im liberalen Verfassungsstaat werden Veränderungen häufig als lineare Fortschrittsgeschichte von der Staatensouveränität zu den Menschenrechten erzählt. Eine solche binäre Kodierung übersieht im Fall des Migrationsrechts, dass sich dessen Zielrichtung zugleich inhaltlich verschob. Dies Veränderungen zeigt der Beitrag für die Bundes...

published in: Zeitschrift für Ausländerrecht 2018, 193-200---------------Die migrationspolitischen Debatten der Gegenwart sind häufig von einer binären Konfrontation von Steuerungszielen und Menschenrechten geprägt, exemplarisch beim Streit um die Obergrenze. Eine gestaltende Migrationspolitik der Mitte setzt dagegen auf die Einsicht, dass auch die...

Solidarity was once at the core of the European integration process. While originally intended to facilitate further integration, solidarity, in recent years, has often been associated with the intention of safeguarding existing policies. This article attempts to untangle this polysemous concept. It discusses the constitutional significance of soli...

Supranational citizenship is politically contested, the object of prominent Court rulings and has given rise to intense academic debate. The contributions to this volume scrutinise these contestations with a special emphasis on the position of the Court of Justice whose more restrictive judgments indicate that something fundamental may have changed...

The constitutional foundations of Union citizenship are bound to remain unstable due to the doctrinal and conceptual ambiguity of supranational citizens’ rights. If that is correct, change need not present a linear progress towards ‘more’ citizenship, reflecting the EU’s famous self-description as ‘ever closer union’. It could similarly result in f...

published in: Dimitry Kochenov (ed.), EU Citizenship and Federalism. The Role of Rights (CUP, 2017), pp. 705-730-------As a supranational polity, the European Union depends – much more than a nation-state – upon the law and judges to preserve its viability and to develop its constitutional infrastructure. It therefore did not come as a great surpri...

Events during 2015 and early 2016 revealed structural deficiencies at the heart of the EU's asylum policy, which allow us to reconstruct the "refugee crisis" as a problem of integration through law. The analysis of systemic shortcomings highlights regulatory and political pitfalls which any attempt to overcome the crisis will have to confront. It w...

Grenzen erleben derzeit eine Renaissance, innerhalb Europas und im Verhältnis zur Türkei und Nordafrika. Während nationale Grenzschließungen auf rechtliche Grenzen stoßen und ihre Effektivität strittig ist, bildet die Kooperation mit Herkunfts- und Transitstaaten einen unverzichtbaren Bestandteil eines koordinierten Flüchtlingsschutzes. Das gilt au...

Scholarship on EU law is well established but arguably lacks sensitivity to the methodological characteristics of transnational discourse. The defining features of the supranational legal order are more fluid than those of domestic legal systems and, moreover, academic debates occur in different languages. This contribution highlights the limits of...

RECONSTRUCTING FREE MOVEMENT AND UNION CITIZENSHIP Rules on free movement and Union citizenship have always had a predilection towards progressive change. This inherent dynamism reflects the general tendency of the EU to rely on an ongoing process of transformative integration through law and corresponds to the historic weight of invocations of ‘ci...

Migration has become a controversial subject across Europe and beyond. At the same time, the EU has built up an impressive set of rules for third-country nationals over the past two decades, which—unlike the mobility of EU citizens—received comparatively little attention apart from immigration and asylum specialists. This contribution presents the...

The ECJ’s citizenship case-law features among the most prominent judicial developments in Luxembourg during the past 15 year. This is hardly surprising given that citizenship has always been a projection sphere for different visions of social justice. Revisiting the classic dispute about social benefits demonstrates structural impediments of the ju...

Debates about differentiated integration are among the rituals of European integration. Whenever the EU enters a critical stage, politicians and academic observers evoke the option of ‘multiple speeds’, ‘concentric circles’ or related terminology and call upon some Member States to proceed towards closer integration without the participation of oth...

For decades, the relationship between the German Bundesverfassungsgericht and the European Court of Justice has captured the imagination of European lawyers. Many European lawyers are fascinated by a potential clash between Karlsruhe and Luxembourg, and have spent hours reflecting on a conflict, which has so far been limited to shadow boxing. The u...

Integration policy instruments disclose how European societies define themselves in response to migration. Pre-departure civic integration tests are emblematic of a new focus on social cohesion and have been a bone of contention in political and academic circles. That is why the ECJ’s long-awaited verdicts on Dutch integration requirements for spou...

The fundamentally revised and extended second edition of the ‘Commentary on EU Immigration and Asylum Law’ comprises four thematic introductions, which are written in the style of an advanced textbook and which are meant to help practitioners, doctoral students and academics who are not familiar with immigration and asylum law to orientate themselv...

The fundamentally revised and extended second edition of the ‘Commentary on EU Immigration and Asylum Law’ comprises four thematic introductions, which are written in the style of an advanced textbook and which are meant to help practitioners, doctoral students and academics who are not familiar with immigration and asylum law to orientate themselv...

The fundamentally revised and extended second edition of the ‘Commentary on EU Immigration and Asylum Law’ comprises four thematic introductions, which are written in the style of an advanced textbook and which are meant to help practitioners, doctoral students and academics who are not familiar with immigration and asylum law to orientate themselv...

The fundamentally revised and extended second edition of the ‘Commentary on EU Immigration and Asylum Law’ comprises four thematic introductions, which are written in the style of an advanced textbook and which are meant to help practitioners, doctoral students and academics who are not familiar with immigration and asylum law to orientate themselv...

published in: Loïc Azoulai, Ségolène Barbou des Places and Etienne Pataut (eds.), Constructing the Person. Rights, Roles, Identities in EU Law (Hart, 2016), pp. 111-130-------------Both ‘personhood’ and ‘human rights’ are basic categories of law with a long tradition in (Western) thought. Historically, not all human beings were considered equal per...

It is widely accepted that the ECJ judgments on the Ankara Agreement, the Additional Protocol and the Decisions of the Association Council (hereinafter: EU-Turkey association acquis) are crucial points of reference for migration law and wider bilateral relations. While many contributions rightly focus on the formidable doctrinal questions, which in...

Free movement law is in the political limelight again. It is discussed controversially across Europe, not only in the UK. Against this background, the Grand Chamber judgment in the Dano case was much more than an exercise of doctrinal interpretation. Judges in Luxembourg had to decide about the constitutional potential of Union citizenship at the o...

The free movement of persons is central to the legal and political identity of the European project; it is the most important right attached to Union citizenship and defines the self-perception of those holding the status. Nevertheless, the precise legal standards for the delimitation of residence and equal treatment rights often remained elusive,...

Mit der Expansion der EGMR-Rechtsprechung und dem Ausgreifen der EU-Grundrechtecharta erreicht die Internationalisierung das Verfassungsrecht. Aufgrund der großzügigen Anwendung der Charta durch den EuGH kommt es zunehmend zu einem doppelten Grundrechtsschutz, der die vom BVerfG bislang verfolgte Trennung der Grundrechtssphären erschüttert. Einen A...

published in: Ruth Rubio-Marin (ed.): Human Rights and Immigration (OUP, 2014), pp. 106–44--------------When it comes to the protection of human rights of foreigners, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg has long assumed a pioneering role. It was the first international court to extend the human rights of foreigners beyond the s...

Dozens of articles and monographs have been written about a potential conflict between the German Federal Constitutional Court (hereinafter FCC) and the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which has so far been limited to shadow-boxing. Karlsruhe relied upon dissuasive tactics and was quite successful. Its warnings encouraged the ECJ to develop reliab...

Among the Lisbon Treaty's reform steps the reconfiguration of the Union's external representation assumes a central role. It is often referred to as one of the Treaty's most prominent achievements which allows Europe to move beyond institutional introspection and concentrate on 'reinforcing the European identity and its independence in order to pro...

There is much confusion among EU experts about the legal status of third-country nationals. This is hardly surprising, since this uncertainty reflects conceptual tensions at the heart of the European project. For half a century, European integration has been defined by the abolition of borders. Through-out Europe borders have been erased both legal...

EU primary law and official strategy papers support the promotion of international migration governance. The success of this venture would be a remarkable achievement: migration would – as the ‘human dimension’ of globalisation – eventually be subject to international norms and institutions. Yet, this official enthusiasm should be tempered. Firstly...

Der EuGH hält den Europäischen Stabilitätsmechanismus, den die Staaten des Euro-Währungsgebiets vertraglich vereinbart haben, für europarechtskonform. Matthias Ruffert (JZ 2013, 257) kritisiert die Begründung hinsichtlich des sogenannten Bail-out-Verbots. Daniel Thym (JZ 2013, 259) sieht in der Entscheidung ein überzeugendes Dokument wider die Erzä...

CFSP diplomacy and CSDP operations differ from law-making and should be described as executive power instead. This may appear as a trivial conclusion, but allows us to read the Treaty regime for CFSP correctly. It explains why institutional practice follows the Treaty concept of formalised decision-making by the Council only when the projection of...

The legal and institutional rules governing the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) constituted a central element of the Treaty of Lisbon, which entered into force in 2009. The post of High Representative and the establishment of the European External Action Service were intended to lay t...