Rethinking Vulnerability in an Increasingly Securitized CEAS: A Critical Look at the New ‘Needs-Based’ Approach

Securitisation and crisis narratives have long shaped EU migration management and progressively undermined fundamental rights. Within this context, CEAS’ vulnerability assessment procedures have been evolving in the opposite direction; they have transitioned from applying rigid group-based exceptions to more flexible schemes, utilising lists of indicators. All approaches have been criticised, however, for systematic inconsistencies among different instruments and for creating antagonisms among asylum seekers by hierarchising between the most and the least vulnerable. Most recently, a new direction for vulnerability assessment has been promoted by the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA), ostensibly tailored to meet the needs of each asylum seeker individually and tackle the strict categorisations of the past. This paper critically examines the potential function of this recent shift toward “needs-based” vulnerability within the broader framework of the New Pact on Asylum and Migration. Drawing on policy mapping of when and why vulnerability mechanisms are introduced or amended and a historical investigation of how special protective carve-outs have functioned in EU asylum law, it probes whether “needs-based” assessments truly mitigate the risk of refoulement or merely aim to provide humanitarian legitimacy of even more restrictive border practices. Should the latter prove valid, vulnerability assessments are re-situated among “problematic” policies, underscoring the urgency of confronting human rights erosions cloaked as protective measures. By situating these shifts within the broader debate on securitisation and compliance, the paper aims to clarify the extent to which a “needs-based” vulnerability screening can effectively safeguard fundamental rights and the principle of non-refoulement in an increasingly security-driven migration governance scheme. Finally, it provides a conceptual foundation for future empirical research, inviting further studies into how far “needs-based” vulnerability assessments are implemented across Member States and whether they truly reduce the risk of refoulement.