The EU asylum system is often criticised as outdated. According to researcher Milka Sormunen, the biggest problem is not in legislation or its interpretation, but in the fact that the member states cannot reach political agreement.
Does the asylum system of the European Union correspond to today's realities? According to oft-heard criticism in recent years, the EU asylum system and related treaties have become outdated, and they should be updated to coincide with today's circumstances and requirements.
Postdoctoral researcher Milka Sormunen, who specialises in constitutional law and European law, noted the phenomenon when Finnish President Sauli Niinistö discussed the applicability of old agreements to contemporary conditions in his keynote speech on foreign policy in August 2021. Niinistö questioned the EU's ability to adhere to its ambitious principles under pressure from migration. Sormunen noticed that similar criticism occurs in other EU countries as well, and wanted to investigate in more detail the phenomenon she calls 'outdating criticism'.
"My starting point was to investigate what is meant by outdating. I noticed that outdating criticism is often quite vague, and its precise object, or the conclusions to be drawn from it, are rarely defined," Sormunen says.
