Its Scope and Limits – Migration and Asylum System

Written by: Pol Navarro I Serradell
Edited by: Alex Marchan
Supervised by: Cansu Macit Karaduman

Over the past decades, Europe has enjoyed an extraordinary period of peace, but this has not been achieved without
any cost. Indeed, the membership of European states within the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
has played a key role, primarily through their commitment to mutual defence, contained in Art. 42 (7) of the
Treaty of the European Union and Art. 5 NATO Charter.

By establishing such clauses, the signatory parties commit to support each other in case of attack against any of them.
Despite their importance in ensuring the security of all allies, scenarios such as the 9/11 terrorist attack on the US or the
2016 terrorist attacks in Paris showed their limitations when the affected states invoked these clauses.

While both clauses have a common objective and show many similarities regarding their content, they also have important
differences. These different approaches, as well as the limited experience regarding the invocation of these clauses,
make it harder to understand how these organizations can address collective defence in Europe.

Given these realities and the need for European countries to continuously adapt to evolving threats, this paper has shed
some light on these issues and addressed the complexities of collective defence. Similarly, this paper attended to those
characteristics that according to some scholars made Art. 42 (7) TEU is an improved version of Art. 5 NATO, especially
regarding its territorial scope.