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Press Review May 2025

 Libya

The IOM organised two ’voluntary return’ flights from the town of Sebha in Libya on 26 and 28 May 2025 to Mali and Chad, sending more than 300 Malians and Chadians back to their countries of origin. According to the Libyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this was the first time a flight of this type had left Sebha for 15 years. However, the deportation of 191 Nigerians from Sebha had already been reported at the end of April 2025 [1].

These ’voluntary returns’, ’proposed’ by the IOM in a context of repeated violations of people on the move’s rights [2], receive financial support from the EU (25 million euros for 2021-2027 [3]) and its Member States [4], which take advantage of these violations to force migrants to give up trying to reach Europe. At the same time, the international associations defending migrants’ rights and working in Libya are muzzled, accused of being involved in ’hostile actions jeopardising national security’ and of ’planning the settlement of migrants of African origin in Libya’ [5]. Thanks to European funding and UN operational support, Tripoli maintains a situation in which, for the 725,000 people on the move living in the country, the ’choice’ to return to their country of origin is not free, given the risks to their lives and integrity – both physical and moral.

 Mauritania

The number of so-called ’voluntary returns’ organised by the IOM from Mauritania more than doubled between 1 January and 16 May 2025, compared with the same period in 2024: 322 people on the move are said to have been sent back to their country of origin in the space of a few months under this programme. At the same time, more than 30,000 migrants were intercepted by the Mauritanian authorities in the first four months of 2025 [6] and subsequently expelled or detained pending expulsion.

These figures add to the panorama of restrictive and repressive migration policies implemented by Mauritania since March 2024 and its ’migration partnership’ with the EU: under the constant threat of violent refoulement, kept in precarious living conditions, and forced to use increasingly dangerous routes to try to reach Europe [7], more and more people on the move are giving in and ’agreeing’ to return to their country of origin, despite the reasons why they left and the risks involved.

 Germany

Germany has begun to push back migrants who present themselves at its border and are not admitted to the country, including those seeking protection: at least 286 people are reported to have been pushed back, 19 of whom had lodged an application for international protection that was found to be inadmissible. The new federal government justifies its decision on the grounds that Germany is surrounded by European countries considered as safe, and that people arriving at Germany’s land borders could have applied for asylum there. Only people considered ’vulnerable’, minors, and pregnant women would be exempt from this measure.

The Merz government is thus continuing the U-turn initiated a few months ago by the German authorities, putting an end to the reception policy initiated under Angela Merkel’s government [8], in defiance of international law and European standards – something that Switzerland has denounced [9], as such refoulements of asylum seekers is explicitly prohibited by article 33 of the Geneva Convention on Refugees. Furthermore, under the Dublin Regulation, Germany (like the other EU Member States) is responsible for determining whether another Member State is responsible for examining an asylum application before transferring a person seeking protection to that State. If no other Member State can be designated as responsible for examining an asylum application, this responsibility falls onto Germany, as does the responsibility grant adequate reception conditions to the applicant: by pushing back migrants in such a way, Germany is shirking its obligations. Yet, the European Union has not reacted to these serious violations of rights.

The German government has announced its intention to suspend family reunification for beneficiaries of subsidiary protection for at least two years: the more than 350,000 people with this status in Germany, the majority of whom are Syrians, will thus be prevented from applying for a residence permit for their children, spouses or parents. The bill, approved by the Council of Ministers, still has to be approved by the Bundestag before it comes into force.

EU Member States are not obliged by EU law to grant beneficiaries of subsidiary protection the right to family reunification, whereas they are obliged to do so in the case of refugees. However, in 2015, A. Merkel decided to open up this right, which was suspended in 2016 and then reintroduced in 2018 with a federal quota of a maximum of 1,000 visas issued per month – creating uncertainty for beneficiaries. While the right to family life is enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as in Article 6 of the German Constitution, the Federal Constitutional Court has already ruled in the past that if there is an alternative to family life in another country (in particular in the country of origin), then the right to family reunification in Germany is not automatic. In any event, it could take several years for the Court to rule on whether this measure complies with the Constitution. The Merz government is thus continuing to unravel Germany’s reception policy, despite the publication of a report criticising the ’counter-productivity’ of these measures and the resulting danger to people on the move [10].

 Bulgaria

Following a reportby the NGO No Name Kitchen, the UK courts are facing numerous appeals against decisions to deport asylum seekers to Bulgaria. In 2004, the United Kingdom concluded a bilateral readmission agreementwith Bulgaria allowing it to transfer there any person who does not have the right to remain in the United Kingdom if it is established they have transited through Bulgaria (art. 8 of the agreement). Lawyers and human rights groups believe that such ’transfers’ expose deportees to inhuman or degrading treatment, prohibited by article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) – to which both the UK and Bulgaria are parties. It has been reported that people deported from European countries to Bulgaria are denied access to housing, means of subsistence or health care, and some are detained in overcrowded and unsanitary centres where they are subjected to physical and psychological violence. Many are also forced to sign documents authorising their ’voluntary return’ to their country of origin.

While the UK courts will be called upon to examine the issue, the situation requires EU Member States to take steps to suspend their deportations to Bulgaria: the Dublin Regulation, which allows them to transfer asylum seekers to another Member State designated as responsible for examining their asylum application (in this case Bulgaria), does not make such transfers an obligation. The Court of Justice of the EU has in addition ruledthat this regulation must be interpreted as requiring Member States to ’refrain from making such a transfer where there are serious and proven grounds for believing that there is a real risk of such [inhuman or degrading] treatment’, in light of the obligations of EU Member States under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and Article 4 thereof. Plus, Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights imposes two obligations on States Parties: the obligation not to resort to inhuman or degrading treatment (a negative obligation, applicable here to Bulgaria), and the obligation not to expel to a country anyone who would be at risk of such treatment, according to the established case law of the European Court of Human Rights [11] (a positive obligation, applicable to all States Parties to the Convention).

 Cyprus

Two boats bound for Cyprus from Syria, carrying 62 Syrian nationals, were intercepted by the Cypriot coastguard and turned back towards the Syrian port of Tartus. This manoeuvre took place following an agreement between the Syrian and Cypriot authorities, under which the former agreed to readmit their nationals who had sought to reach Cyprus, as confirmed by the Cypriot minister responsible for migration [12]. A similar event, involving 80 Syrian exiles, had already been reported on 14 March 2025.

The cooperation of the Syrian authorities and their guarantees that those pushed back would not be prosecuted do nothing to alter the unlawful nature of this operation, which constitutes a refoulement under international and EU law. Such operations deprive Syrian migrants of their internationally recognised right to leave any country, including their own [13], and to seek the protection of another State.

 Spain

On 28 May, a boat carrying 150 people on the move arrived at the port of La Restinga, on the island of El Hierro, in the Spanish Canary archipelago: as it approached the dock, it overturned, killing seven people. The President of Gran Canaria Cabildo described the accident as a ’disgrace’ [14] and called for the creation of ’safe and legal routes’ for migration, in order to put an end to the large number of deaths on the Canaries (more than 9,000 in 2024).

In 2024, the Atlantic route once again became the deadliest in the world after the closure of the central Mediterranean route. People fleeing from the West African coast face tighter maritime controls financed by Europe [15], and take longer and more dangerous routes, risking the capsizing or drifting of their boats, which are often unsuitable for such crossings or for the number of people being transported. On 26 May, a wooden pirogue carrying the bodies of 11 people and their Malian passports was found, after a long drift, on the other side of the Atlantic – off the coast of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines [16].

 France

The French Senate has approved a bill designed to put an end to the work of associations providing support and information to people detained in administrative detention centres (CRAs). If this bill is adopted by the National Assembly, the mission to help people exercise their rights in CRAs, currently assumed by those associations, will be handed over to the French Office for Immigration and Integration (OFII), a state-dependent agency.

These associations, along with other organisations committed to defending migrants’ rights, have signed an opinion piecedenouncing this project: concerned that this measure could ’blind society to the CRAs’, they recall their essential role as ’democratic watchdog’, as well as the guarantees that their work provides in the face of administrative decisions that are often challengeable and sanctioned by the courts. They believe that the OFII could not fulfil this role in complete independence, as it is a public body under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior, and already responsible for the French government’s ’assisted return and reintegration’ policy, which would create an obvious conflict of interest between its missions.

 Greece

Following his visit to Greece in February 2025, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Michael O’Flaherty, has published his recommendations to the country concerning the respect of rights of people on the move arriving in Greece. In particular, he notes with concern the persistent reports of refoulement at Greece’s land and sea borders. The Commissioner also notes a general lack of effective prosecution and investigation of alleged human rights violations against migrants, and recommends that the Greek authorities follow up on the Greek Ombudsman’s report regarding the Pylos shipwreck, in order to establish the acts and omissions that led to this incident, as well as those responsible.

Greece, which consistently denies the systematic refoulement of which its border guards are accused [17], has not changed its position: in a press release, the Greek police stated that its officers were only involved in ’the lawful prevention of illegal border crossings, while the migrants are still in Turkish territory and have not yet reached Greece’. With regard to the Pylos shipwreck, the Maritime Court of Piraeus subsequently announced that it was bringing criminal charges against 17 Greek coastguards, accused of having caused the shipwreck [18].

The Greek government has announced that it intends to impose a prison sentence of at least two years on people whose asylum applications are rejected in Greece, before they are deported. Those refused a residence permit will also be threatened with imprisonment. These announcements follow a tightening of migration rules in the country, with the abolition of a programme that allowed people who had resided in Greece without a residence permit for at least three years to have their administrative status regularised.

These worrying measures could considerably weaken the right to asylum in Greece, which is already regularly flouted by the public authorities [19] (refoulements, violence, ’reception’ or detention in inhuman or degrading conditions, etc.). By using threats to discourage applications for international protection and residence permits, the Greek government is going against the recommendations of the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) [20]. The CPT regularly reminds Greece that the act of migrating is not in itself a crime, and that people on the move should therefore not be detained in prison-like conditions – such as those observed in Greek administrative detention centres. Indifferent to these reports pointing out the inhumane nature of the conditions in which migrants are received and detained on its territory, the Greek state is pursuing its criminalisation of migration – a path it had already engaged in through its so-called ’fight against migrant smuggling’ [21].

 Italy

In a press release, the Italian Court of Cassation has announced that it wishes to seek the interpretation of the Court of Justice of the EU regarding the recent transfer of 27 migrants to the Gjäder camp in Albania, which has been converted into a ’pre-expulsion centre’ (CPR). More specifically, the files of two transferees are under scrutiny. In the first case, the Cour de Cassation questioned the use of the extraterritorial camp at Gjäder as a CPR to detain a person subject to a deportation order, insofar as the person concerned came from a country with which there was no readmission agreement offering any serious prospect of deportation – it is the compliance of such a decision with the 2008 Returns Directive that the Court is questioning. In the second case, it questions the legality of keeping a person who has applied for asylum while detained in the Gjäder CPR, basing itself on the ’reception’ directive and going back on its decision of 8 May 2025, which had equated the Gjäder CPR with those located on Italian soil (and was since invalidated by the Court of Appeal in Rome, which ruled that only asylum seekers placed in an accelerated procedure at the border could be detained there [22]).

The tug-of-war between the Italian judiciary and executive over the Italy-Albania protocole continues, highlighting the many legal issues raised by the use of outsourced detention centres, at a time when the European Commission and many Member States are trying to enshrine such systems in EU law, with the creation of extra-territorial ’return hubs’ [23].

An Egyptian national and a Sudanese national have been arrested and imprisoned in Italy for ’facilitating illegal immigration’: they were among the 252 people disembarked at Salerno after being rescued at sea by the Solidaire boat. The group is believed to have set off from the Libyan coast in three separate boats, and to have been assisted by the Solidaire in the international waters between Malta and Libya.

Italy is no stranger to prosecuting survivors of shipwrecks, as are other European countries [24]: after the Cutro shipwreck in February 2023, in which 94 people were killed, Italy convicted three survivors at first instance of allegedly ’facilitating illegal immigration’, while the preliminary hearings in the trial of the coastguards and civil servants accused of having neglected the seriousness of the event and delayed the arrival of help are still underway [25].

 Netherlands

The leader of the far-right Dutch party Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV), G. Wilders, has presented a ten-point plan to ’drastically reduce immigration’, adding that his party would leave the coalition and the government if strict measures were not taken. The PVV’s ’plan’ includes: a complete suspension of the right to asylum, a temporary suspension of family reunifications for refugees, the expulsion of all Syrians who have applied for asylum or are residing in the Netherlands on temporary visas, the closure of reception centres for asylum seekers, and the deployment of the army at land borders.

The PVV, having won the 2023 elections and then failed to secure the post of Prime Minister, could well succeed in forcing the hand of its allies (as was already the case in October 2024), and deal a serious blow to the rights of exiles and the rule of law in the Netherlands. Indeed, while G. Wilders’ ’plan’ is inspired by the deportation measures taken illegally and with impunity by Germany [26] , he does not rule out ’withdrawing the Netherlands from certain European conventions’ to give free rein to his proposals, knowing that they are contrary to European and international law.

 Poland

The Polish Parliament has adopted an extension of its ’suspension of the right to asylum’ at the border with Belarus, for a second period of 60 days. With this decision, which violates international law and its own constitution [27], Poland has given itself the right to keep pushing back anyone seeking asylum after arriving at this border, accusing Belarus of facilitating their passage in order to ’destabilise’ the country.

These refoulements, strongly criticised by civil society [28] and international organisations [29], expose asylum seekers to arbitrary decisions (the territorial scope of the measure being very vaguely defined), as well as to violations of their rights in Belarus, as documented by an Oxfam reportin March 2025. Faced with these risks, the European Court of Human Rights ordered Poland, on 12 occasions during the first two months (April-May 2025) of this ’suspension’ of asylum, to take provisional measures to protect people on the move from refoulement [30]. In two of these cases, Poland failed to comply with the Court’s injunction. It also responded to the Oxfam report by stating that ’the measures taken by the Polish Government to protect the EU’s external borders [...] must be assessed as proportionate and justified’ [31].

 Sweden

The Swedish Prime Minister has announced that he wants to multiply by 34 the amount of ’support’ given to people on the move who accept a ’voluntary return’ to their country of origin: if this proposal goes ahead, the amount of this ’financial incentive’ would rise from €900 to €32,000 per adult. Sweden has also pledgeda contribution of more than €9 million to the IOM, in particular to finance its ’voluntary return’ programme, and to facilitate the expulsion (from Sweden or the EU) of Iraqi, Somali, Tunisian or Uzbek nationals.

This policy is part of a European drive to support the misnamed ’voluntary returns’, which are procedures whereby states expel people in a so-called irregular situation by obtaining their ’consent’ to return – consent often obtained by combining a strategy of non-reception with financial incentives to leave [32] – rather than by using force. These returns, which are falsely described as voluntary and denounced by rights organisations, are less costly for governments and enable them to improve their image by using misleading terminology. Sweden is demonstrating that it prefers to invest significant amounts of money in expelling migrants from its territory, rather than in receiving and protecting them – even though the countries whose nationals it deems a priority to expel are far from safe for their populations.

 United Kingdom

The UK has announced its intention to seek an agreement with Kosovo to set up a ’return hub’ for the detention of migrants facing deportation after their asylum applications have been rejected in the UK: the President of Kosovo has declared herself ’open’ to such discussions.

Despite the failure of the UK-Rwanda arrangement in 2022 [33], K. Starmer’s government seems determined to draw inspiration from the protocol concluded between Italy and Albania (2023), to set up extraterritorial expulsion camps in the Western Balkans (in Kosovo, but also in Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania [34]), ignoring the warnings from civil society regarding the treatment of detained people on the move in the region [35].

 The ’safe third country’ concept

The European Commission has published a proposal for a regulationto reform the concept of ’safe third country’, as provided for in the European Pact on Migration and Asylum. The concept of ’safe third country’ refers to a country outside the EU where there are sufficient safeguards (right to international protection, protection against the death penalty or execution, against torture, inhuman or degrading treatment, against persecution, against refoulement, etc.) for the safety of individuals to be deemed guaranteed. This qualification only has an impact on an asylum application if a so-called “connection criteria” is met, on the basis of which “it would be reasonable for the applicant to go to that country’: in this case, the asylum application is declared inadmissible and rejected without examination on the merits. This ’connection criteria” has been interpreted quite strictly by the Court of Justice of the EU, which has ruled that the mere transit of an asylum seeker through a third country considered as ’safe’ could not in itself suffice to declare that a connection existed between the two [36].

In order to broaden the application of this concept, the Commission therefore proposes, on the one hand, that any asylum application from a person who has transited through a ’safe third country’ could be declared inadmissible – a measure clearly intended to circumvent established case-law and generalise the use of this concept. On the other hand, the Commission wants Member States to be able to declare any asylum application inadmissible on the grounds that there is an arrangement with a third country considered to be safe to examine the substance of the asylum application, rather than the EU State in which it was lodged. If this second measure is adopted, the outsourcing of asylum procedures will considerably intensify: EU Member States will be able to shirk their responsibility for examining asylum applications simply by concluding an arrangement with a third country, which would itself carry out this examination – potentially according to its own standards, outside the EU legal framework and its guarantees. In view of the countries included by the European Commission on its list of ’safe countries of origin’ (such as Egypt and Tunisia [37]), there is room for doubt as to the real safety of the third countries that will be listed as ’safe third countries’. Reformed in such a way, the concept could considerably weaken the right to asylum in the EU, and lead to serious violations of the rights of migrants, who would be expelled to countries they have no connection to, and forced to seek asylum there.

 Role of the European Court of Human Rights

Nine EU Member States have signed an open letter, on the initiative of Italy and Denmark, calling for ’a new and open-minded discussion about the interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights’ (ECHR). The signatory states criticise the European Court of Human Rights for interpreting the ECHR in a manner that ’in some cases, has extended the scope of the Convention too far as compared with the original intentions behind the Convention’, referring to decisions (without naming any) that have prevented them from expelling from their territory third-country nationals guilty of crimes. The Secretary General of the Council of Europe responded tothis attack on the European Court of Human Rights by pointing out that the Court, far from being an external body, was freely created by the States party to the ECHR, on the basis of their common desire to see the principles enshrined therein respected, in complete independence and impartiality – principles that such a challenge seems to contravene.

The signatory states, while admitting that the ’ideas [founding the ECHR, born in the aftermath of the Second World War] themselves are universal and eternal’, pretend to be unaware that the grounds on which the European Court of Human Rights may deem an expulsion unlawful are extremely serious grounds – the risk that the person expelled will be exposed to inhuman or degrading treatment or torture, or that their right to life will be violated [38]. Relativising the universal and absolute nature of these rights, as implied in the argument of this letter, weakens their scope for all persons protected by the Convention. In addition, the text draws a dangerous shortcut between ’a minority of migrants’ who choose to commit crimes in the EU, and the efforts of several European countries to implement strict national policies against ’irregular migration’. This parallel feeds a stereotypical discourse associating so-called ’irregular’ migration with crime, and attempts to justify the policy of criminalising migration that European states are implementing [39] even though there is no causal link between migration and the commission of crimes [40].