The European Court of Justice shaping the right to be heard for asylum seekers, returnees, and visa applicants : an exercise in judicial diplomacy

Abstract

This article analyses a decade of jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU, the Court) to show how the Court has shaped asylum seekers' and immigrants' right to be heard and to determine the added value of its jurisprudence to the protection of the right to be heard at EU and domestic levels. The article asks whether the CJEU has developed a specific conception of this right and whether this conception aligns with any of the existing scholarly characterisations of the CJEU's approach to migration: activism, passivism, idiosyncratic, or favouring the interpretation of governments or referring courts. The article finds that, taken together, the CJEU's judgments have shed light on the scope of application of the right to be heard and enhanced the overall protection of this right for asylum seekers, returnees, and visa applicants by crafting common standards of when and how to hear individuals and by delimitating tasks between administrative authorities and courts. The CJEU has thus filled significant gaps in EU secondary legislation on the protection of the right to be heard; established good conduct principles for administrative hearings; and empowered domestic courts to ensure the legal accountability of the executive and effective remedies for third-country nationals. Nevertheless, the domestic implementation of the right to be heard, as shaped by the CJEU, is still incoherent.