Paris, March 16th, 2016
At a further summit meeting in Brussels on the 17 and 18 March, the EU and Turkey will adopt an agreement intended to resolve what is wrongly described as the ‘migrant crisis’. This is a plan above all that will allow the European Union to push refugees back beyond EU borders, and to subcontract its obligations to Turkey. Thus will members states flee their responsibilities in defiance of the right to asylum. Migreurop, a European and African network that unites (…)

UE member states are calling on Turkey to control their borders

While residents of the Aleppo region are forced to flee under a shower of bombs, European governments’ primary concern is to confine them as far away as possible from their borders. For this purpose, they rely on Turkey, although it is already a party to the geopolitical battleground around Syria. While tens of thousands of refugees are stranded at the Turkish border, Recep Tayyip Erdogan is negotiating with desperate European leaders the recognition of Turkey as a "safe country" (which (…)

Taking the opportunity of the Euro-African Summit at La Valette, on Nov. 11-12 2015, Migreurop network strongly emphasizes that, under the false pretense of cooperation and development, UE bargains with African states to subcontract the control of its borders, to deter the possibilities of free circulation, and to prioritize detention and deportation of illegalized migrants.
Just a few weeks after the global sensation caused by the photo of the corpse of young Aylan Kurdi, washed up on (…)

On 3 March, Tunisia and the European Union signed a ‘mobility partnership’.
Over the last two years, the signatory organizations have repeatedly expressed their concerns about this partnership. We hereby reiterate them and condemn the lack of transparency in the negotiation process which did not involve civil society actors, many of whom have been active on issues directly relevant to the agreement. The implementation of such agreement is particularly worrying in the current Tunisian (…)

On 26 February, the European Parliament will vote on the “EU-Turkey agreement on the readmission of persons residing without authorisation”. The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN) and Migreurop call upon the European Parliament to vote against this agreement until the full respect of rights of migrants and refugees can be guaranteed at all stages of the readmission procedure.
This agreement would allow the EU and Turkey to return foreign nationals irregularly entering and/or (…)