Among the obsession with security and the fight against irregular immigration: À propos of the new Spanish Asylum Law

Abstract

The goal of this contribution is to analyse the new Spanish law on asylum and subsidiary protection. Adopted last October in order to adapt the Spanish legal order to the European asylum policy developments, the new law introduces unquestionable improvements, particularly, the regulation for the first time of the subsidiary protection status and its practical equalization to the right of asylum. However, the obsession with preserving security, on the one hand, and with avoiding the use of asylum for irregular immigration aims, on the other, bring about the persistence in some cases, and new emergence in others, of measures which are questionable, if not hardly compatible with the Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees.