In 2015 and 2016, the European Union (EU) experienced the largest inflow of asylum-seekers in its history, with around 1.2 million people applying for asylum in each of these two years (Eurostat 2017). This inflow highlighted the persistent and profound deficiencies of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) to achieve its key aims: first, to provide harmonised (‘common’) asylum standards across the EU and, second, to establish a distribution scheme determining which Member State is responsible for the assessment of individual asylum claims.