Revista Temas de Derecho Constitucional

239 Asilo en el Reino Unido: un derecho restringido authorities of their own country. EU asylum applications are therefore inadmissible 20 . What this means is that the increasing regulation of the right to seek asylum in Member countries aims at dealing with non-European, ‘third country’ migration. Article 18 of the Charter guarantees the right to asylum with due respect for the rules of the Convention and the Protocol, as far as these are ‘in accordance with’ the Treaty establishing the European Community (TEC), also known as the Rome Treaty of 25 March 1957, now the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (‘The TFEU’), as amended by the treaty of Lisbon, 2007. Article 67.2 of the TFEU obliges Member States to ‘frame a common policy on asylum, immigration and external border control, based on solidarity between Member States, which is fair towards third-country nationals’ 21 . Article 78 provides the criteria to be applied to said common asylum policy to any third- country national requiring international protection. THE EU QUALIFICATION DIRECTIVE As a result of that common policy the EU Council issued the Directive 2004/83/EC ‘on minimum standards for the qualification and status of third country nationals or stateless persons as refugees or as persons who otherwise need international protection and the content of the protection granted ’ 22 . Unlike EU Regulations, Directives are addressed at States, and they require to be incorporated or transposed by each individual Member by means of their own domestic legislation. Directives set out objectives to be achieved but it is up to the individual countries to decide how they give effect and implement the Directives’ contents and objectives. This is a prerogative as well as a duty: In the case of Commission of the European Communities v United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland C-256/08 23 the UK was found to be in breach of the obligations under the Directive for having failed to transpose its provisions within the prescribed period. Directive 2004/83/EC was incorporated into UK law by virtue of the Refugee or Person in Need of International Protection (Qualification) Regulations 2006 (‘The Qualification Regulations’) 24 , as well by the Immigration Rules (‘The Rules’), issued by the Secretary of State for the Home Department. The main objective of the Directive was to ‘lay down minimum standards for the qualification of third country nationals or stateless persons as refugees or as persons who otherwise need international protection and the content of the 20 Para. 326E, unless the requirement in paragraph 326F is met, i.e. that the Member State of which the applicant is a national has derogated from the European Convention on Human Rights (Para. 326F(a)), or the procedure detailed in Article 7(1) of the Treaty on European Union has been initiated (Para. 326F(a)), or a decision regarding said procedure has been adopted (Para. 326F(c)). 21 Stateless persons are be treated, for the purpose of the provision, as third-country nationals. 22 Superseded by Directive 20121/95/EU on ‘standards for the qualification of third-country nationals or stateless persons as beneficiaries of international protection, for a uniform status for refugees or for persons eligible for subsidiary protection, and for the content of the protection granted’ . 23 Court of Justice of the European Union, 30 April 2009 24 A Statutory Instrument (not an Act of Parliament) made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department. In force from 9 October 2006.