Mid-way in the Valletta processes, and as African and European high officials are meeting in Malta on 8/9 February 2017, the European Union is crossing a step further in its attempts to limit mobility of migrants and imposes its rule on countries where most of migrants originate from through the use of the “European travel document”, a document adopted last October 2016 and almost unnoticed. The action plan established in Valletta in November 2015 by the EU, its Member States as well as 35 (...)
2017
articles annee
The European Union cannot abolish winter: it must instead put an end to the criminal hotspot policy!
At what point does failing to assist a person in danger become a crime? How many deaths are necessary to constitute a crime against humanity? These questions have been raised for years in relation to the thousands of people who have died in the Mediterranean due to the lack of legal routes into the European Union (EU). Today, the increasingly serious situation of thousands of refugees, trapped by freezing temperatures in Greek camps and on the ‘Balkan routes’, directly challenges the choices (...)
“Relocations”, a pretext for deportation
Presented in the European Agenda on Migration, launched in May 2015 by the European Commission as being the EU face of solidarity to the inappropriately named “migration crisis”, relocation consists of dividing up among different member states migrants identified in Greek and Italian hotspots as eligible for refugee status. After the Commission decided not to make this measure binding (many states having refused to accept the “quotas” imposed upon them), 23 countries committed “on a voluntary (...)