Book Review: Joyce De Coninck, The EU’s Human Rights Responsibility Gap, Deconstructing Human Rights Impunity of International Organisations, Hart Publishing 2024

In her book, The EU's Human Rights Responsibility Gap, Deconstructing Human Rights Impunity of International Organisations, based on her dissertation, Joyce De Coninck addresses a perennial question about how third country nationals (TCNs) who have been subjected to unlawful human rights conduct by the European Union (EU) can seek and obtain legal redress.In the current EU political and legal context -characterised by a migration management mode which aims to reduce the number of incoming TCNs through 'a strict application of the "in/out" dichotomy, which relies on methods of externalisation, informalisation, securitisation including militarisation, digitalisation, and agencification' 1 -De Coninck engages in an 'arduous endeavour', as she rightfully puts it. 2Namely, she sets out to analyse the intersection between the responsibility rules applicable to the EU under EU law and international law, on the one hand, and the human rights regime under EU and international law, on the other.Following this analysis, which spans multiple legal domains and also substantive areas of EU law, she tests the outcome of her theoretical legal framework on four practical cases in the area of integrated border management (IBM).More concretely, she tests the EU's normative commitment to the principle of non-refoulement in four scenarios corresponding to the 'four-tier access control model' of IBM. 3 The first scenario focuses on visa regulation under EU law, the second scrutinises the maritime operation Sophia in the Mediterranean, the third zooms in on Frontex conduct in the Aegean Sea in concert with the Greek Coastguard, and the fourth one delves into the informalisation of readmission agreements, focusing in particular on the EU-Turkey Statement.What is unique about this book is its angle of scrutiny on the question of the human rights responsibility of the EU -which De Coninck defines as 'transversal', as opposed to unidimensional accounts of how to identify the most promising avenues for judicial redress in concrete cases of alleged human rights violations on behalf of the EU.While the latter approach does not question the existing human rights architecture of the EU, De Coninck reverses the questions posed.She is not interested in identifying the right adjudicative body and avenue in order to hold the EU responsible for human rights harms, but goes beyond this