This paper identifies differences in the European Court of Justice’s (CJEU) and European Court of Human Rights’s (ECtHR) recent interpretations of “safe third country” provisions within European asylum and refugee law. The paper then applies those interpretations to Greece’s recent “safe third country” legislation, an integral part of the March 2016 EU-Turkey refugee deal. It notes that these differences might produce different legal outcomes for the same legal question, creating a rift in the two courts’ current “gentleman’s agreement” to respect one another’s rulings on refugee law. The paper proposes that the CJEU accept EU accession to the ECHR according to the terms of the 2014 EU-Council of Europe agreement in order to create greater legal certainty during a refugee crisis plagued by geopolitical uncertainty.

This paper analyzes EU immigration and refugee law as of April 2016 and may not reflect legal or policy changes enacted after that date.