The European Union's Temporary Protection Directive: Lessons from Syria and Ukraine

The primary objective of this thesis is to examine the emergence of the temporary protection framework within the broader international protection regime and to assess its effectiveness as an emergency mechanism in responding to large-scale displacement. Specifically, the thesis explores whether temporary protection offers a valuable and practical solution for providing immediate protection to displaced individuals during humanitarian crises. To this end, the study critically analyzes the evolution of the international protection system and the development of the European Union's migration and asylum policies, with the aim of identifying the underlying factors that necessitated the adoption of temporary protection instruments. The thesis also seeks to highlight the legal, political, and institutional dynamics that have shaped these frameworks and to evaluate the operational challenges they pose. Although the Temporary Protection Directive was introduced in the EU to provide swift and collective responses during mass influx situations—where national asylum systems are overwhelmed by the volume of individual applications—it remained inactive during the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis. By contrast, the TPD was activated in response to the Ukrainian refugee crisis in 2022. This study investigates the reasons for the non-implementation of the directive in 2015 and the motivations behind its activation in 2022, employing European integration theories to analyze the political and institutional factors influencing these divergent responses.