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Press Review November 2025

 Mauritania

On 17 October 2025, two new “temporary reception centres for foreigners” were inaugurated in Mauritania, in Nouakchott and Nouadhibou. These facilities were funded and built by the European Union with the support of the Foundation for the Internationalisation of Public Administrations [1] (FIAP), following the model of the “Centros de Acogida Temporal de Extranjeros” [2] (CATE) in the Canary Islands. Their opening forms part of the migration partnership concluded in 2024 with the European Union to “reduce departures towards Europe”. Officially, people arrested may be held there for up to 72 hours for “identification interviews”. However, an investigation by porCausa and El Salto [3] warns of the risk that these centres may operate as detention sites, a claim which the European Union denies [4].

By delegating to an authoritarian regime [5] the management, detention and sorting of people on the move, the European Union deliberately places itself outside “the control mechanisms” that apply on its own territory. The construction of these centres highlights the responsibility of a Union that continues to externalise its borders at any cost, in this instance in a country where serious human rights violations are thoroughly documented [6].

In addition, a report published this month on the CATE in the Canary Islands highlights the failure to comply with international standards, both regarding infrastructure and access to information or the effective possibility of applying for asylum [7]. The new centres in Nouakchott and Nouadhibou, directly inspired by them, risk in turn becoming links in yet another system of invisibilisation and forced return.

 Tunisia

In a report published on 6 November 2025 [8], Amnesty International documents, on the basis of more than a hundred testimonies gathered between 2023 and 2025, the violations committed in Tunisia against people on the move. The report describes a migration policy based on racist practices, beatings, torture, sexual violence and dangerous, unlawful and violent interceptions at sea by the Tunisian National Guard. Amnesty condemns the passivity and cynicism of the European Union and highlights its responsibility under the memorandum of understanding concluded with Tunis in July 2023 to “prevent departures towards Europe”.

Despite massive and well-documented human rights violations in Tunisia [9], the European Union and its Member States have not ended their cooperation with the authoritarian and repressive government of Kaïs Saïed, prioritising restrictions on mobility over respect for the rule of law. By externalising the management of migration to Tunisia while closing their eyes to the widespread violations of the rights of people on the move in the country, the European Union incurs responsibility.

 Italy

The Italian Parliament definitively adopted on 26 November the “Flow Decree” for 2026–2028, which sets quotas for the admission of foreign workers for the next three years. It provides for the allocation of nearly 500,000 work permits, with specific quotas reserved for countries considered Italy’s “migration partners”. The procedures are fully digital and rely on a calendar of “click days” that determine when employers may lodge applications.

This decree establishes a system of exploitation of foreign workers, based on a utilitarian vision of migration. Under the guise of a controlled “opening” of borders, it organises the dependence of foreign workers on their employers and makes any right to stay conditional on precarious contracts, thus creating a workforce that is easily replaceable and easily expellable. At the same time Italy is also attacking the right to family reunification, preventing workers from settling permanently with their families and living in dignity. The IDOS Study and Research Centre revealed in its 2025 Statistical Report on Immigration [10], that Italy’s “flow decrees” favour the exploitation of foreign workers and human trafficking [11].

The first Italy–Albania intergovernmental summit was held in Rome on 13 November 2025. Beyond trade partnerships and Italy’s support for Albania’s accession to the European Union, the central issue was the implementation of the memorandum of understanding concluded in 2023, providing for the establishment in Albania of detention and removal centres under Italian jurisdiction. Although the initial agreement envisioned the processing of 36,000 people per year, the scheme has so far barely operated [12] due to objections from Italian [13] and European courts [14].

The failure to implement the Italy–Albania protocol since 2023 shows that this structure rests on a structural violation of legal safeguards (absence of effective remedies and judicial oversight). Yet Giorgia Meloni insists the centres will operate as planned and will be fully functional when the European Pact on Migration and Asylum enters into force in June 2026.

These centres represent a step forward in the European strategy of externalisation: not only asylum procedures and administrative detention but now expulsions themselves are delegated to non-EU states conveniently designated as “safe”.

This requires altering current EU law by building new European legislation (the Pact, the concept of safe countries, the Return Regulation) that is less protective, allowing Member States to evade their international obligations [15].

 France

Six organisations — Refugee Women’s Centre, Médecins du Monde, Utopia 56, Roots, Salam and Human Rights Observers — lodged an emergency application before the administrative court in Lille on 18 November. They denounce the “non-respect of human rights” suffered by more than 2,000 migrants living in precarious camps in the Dunkirk area and ask the court to recognise the “serious and unlawful” infringement of fundamental freedoms and order immediate and lasting measures: access to water, food, healthcare, accommodation, and information.

The situation in the Dunkirk area reflects a deliberate policy of non-reception designed to deter migration by making living conditions so intolerable that people on the move “give up” remaining on the coast. As early as 2017, the courts ordered the State to ensure minimum access to water and sanitation in camps in the Calais area [16]. But as in Calais, these obligations are now ignored, and the French State denies people on the move the material conditions of dignified and adequate reception, exposing them to severe vulnerability.

Migrants survive only thanks to the work of organisations that alone compensate for the State’s inaction and act as a defence against institutional violence.

 Greece

Greece has now generalised bone tests to determine the age of young migrants who declare themselves minors, following a ministerial decision adopted in August 2025 [17]. This system requires a series of assessments — medical, psychosocial and radiographic of the wrist or left hand — to determine age. Where results diverge, the radiographic exam prevails. The Minister for Migration and Asylum, Thanos Plevris, has already welcomed the scheme, stating that more than 50% of those tested were declared to be adults.

The use of bone tests is not new in Greece or elsewhere in Europe [18], but it is now openly assumed and normalised. Yet these methods are scientifically discredited because of their margin of error, sometimes of several years [19]. The European Economic and Social Committee has called for them to be “abandoned outright”, stressing that in the absence of reliable tools it is irresponsible to rely on methods known to be approximate [20].

By basing fundamental decisions — access to accommodation, protection, regular stay — on a tool deemed “as reliable as a crystal ball” [21], the Greek State effectively jeopardises the protection owed to unaccompanied minors.

By choosing a cynical, scientifically dubious and politically opportunistic approach, Greece opens the way to their expulsion and disregards its obligations regarding the rights of the child and the best interests of the minor, to whom the benefit of the doubt is not given. In doing so, it incurs responsibility for violations of their rights, exposing them still further to trafficking, abuse, mistreatment and police violence [22].

 United Kingdom

The United Kingdom has taken a further step in dismantling asylum rights by transforming international protection into a precarious, revisable and conditional status. The Labour government’s reform reduces the duration of refugee status from five years to thirty months and postpones access to permanent residence to 20 years.

Refugees will be subject to regular reassessments and may be removed as soon as London designates their country as “safe”. The government also intends to abolish automatic access to social support, use artificial intelligence to determine minority, condition access to permanent residence on employment or study, restrict family reunification and reduce the scope of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The government thus hollows out asylum law and departs from the letter of the Geneva Convention. This reform exposes people on the move to widespread violations of their rights: arbitrary expulsions based on opportunistic designations of “safe countries”, infringements of the right to private and family life, and violations of children’s rights through the use of artificial intelligence to determine age.

Behind this repressive shift, presented as a “historic” turning point, lies an electoral strategy. Faced with pressure from the far right and the rise of Nigel Farage, Keir Starmer has adopted a rhetoric of firmness that sacrifices people on the move to electoral politics.

 Frontex

Frontex is opening its first air base in Africa, in Cape Verde, to monitor the Atlantic route towards the Canary Islands. Using aircraft chartered from private companies, the agency intends to detect boats departing from Senegal, Mauritania or Gambia, and transmit this information to the local authorities so they can intercept migrants. After failed negotiations with Dakar and Nouakchott, Cape Verde thus becomes the new pivot of a European control system deployed far beyond its borders and based on a fragile legal foundation. In principle, Frontex’s mandate does not permit it to operate directly outside the European Union. To circumvent this limit, the agency will not deploy its own staff but will outsource surveillance to private actors while receiving real-time images in Warsaw.

This new system fuels a form of “proxy pushback”, marked by documented risks of serious violations of fundamental rights [23]. The agency’s own Fundamental Rights Officer reportedly warned in May of the absence of safeguards in countries where protection against inhuman treatment is not guaranteed, recalling the obligation to respect the principle of non-refoulement [24].

At a time when the European agency is criticised for its participation or complicity in pushbacks in the Aegean Sea and at the Balkan borders [25], its arrival in Cape Verde confirms once again the normalisation of extraterritorial repressive practices targeting people on the move.

On 4 November 2025, Frontex deployed 100 officers to Bosnia and Herzegovina. The official aim is to prevent “irregular crossings” and strengthen security along the Balkan route. Frontex officers will patrol alongside Bosnian border guards and participate in surveillance operations at borders and airports. The cooperation agreement between Frontex and Sarajevo was signed in June 2025 [26].

This deployment illustrates the EU’s growing strategy of externalising border control, whereby responsibilities for “reception” are delegated to third countries to prevent people on the move from reaching Europe, in disregard of their rights. By strengthening Frontex’s presence in Bosnia, the EU extends its filtering capacity upstream of its own borders, in a country where violence, pushbacks and degrading treatment against migrants are regularly denounced [27].

This deployment also raises concerns regarding access to rights, as it offers no effective guarantees against violence and inhuman or degrading treatment that could result from the presence of the European agency. Not only because Frontex is near-immune to legal accountability [28], but also because Article 12 of the agreement guarantees its impunity for all acts committed in the context of a joint operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, whether before criminal, civil or administrative courts.

Thus, even if the agency’s officers do not operate alone, their presence contributes to legitimising a coercive and opaque control system outside the EU.

 The solidarity mechanism

In its annual report on asylum and migration, the European Commission ranks Spain, Italy, Greece and Cyprus as countries “under migratory pressure”, mainly due to the arrival of people on the move by sea. This classification triggers the Pact’s “solidarity mechanism”, planned to enter into force in 2026: relocations of asylum seekers, payment of €20,000 per person not taken in, or operational support to the concerned states. The announcement immediately provoked strong opposition from a group of states — Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic — which reject both the reception of asylum seekers and the financial contribution. The Polish and Hungarian leaders, engaged in domestic political posturing before elections, promise to “apply nothing” from the Pact.

With the “solidarity mechanism”, the European Union claims to resolve a situation for which it is itself responsible, as the rise in Mediterranean crossings is a direct consequence of the closure of European borders. This mechanism is in reality an inequitable device that organises the “authoritarian distribution of people on the move among a few willing states, while the others may avoid it by paying a financial contribution” [29]. People on the move are thus arbitrarily sent to a country they do not know, without consideration for their circumstances, their needs or their choices, becoming transferable or buyable accounting units.

Far from building European solidarity, the Pact reinforces existing imbalances and consolidates a governance system based on sorting, detention and exclusion, to the detriment of the fundamental rights of people on the move.