Deciphering European migration policies
For months now, NGOs saving lives in the Mediterranean have had to suffer libels and slander coming from the Italian Justice Department, FRONTEX and the European Far Right. The NGOs are accused of colluding with smugglers, putting people’s lives at risk and acting as pull factors.
At the end of 2016, FRONTEX Agency and European military complex EUNAVFOR Med made the first move with two internal reports in which they accused the NGOs of collusion with the smugglers. In April 2017, the (...)
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Asylum down the drain. Intolerable pressure on Tunisia
Lately, Tunisian authorities have been the target of intolerable pressure by Germany and Italy. Within a week, they have been forced to clarify their opposition to the German as well as to the Italian authorities which were allegedly planning to send migrants and refugees back to Tunisia. Domestic security issues appear as a cornerstone in the cooperation framework imposed to Tunisia albeit being attached to a domain which is clearly distinct from it: the right of asylum.
Pushing for the (...)The European travel document Yet another step to deport by all means
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 (...)
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 (...)
A Europe united against refugees
Many observers see in the politics of the European member states a profound divide between the ‘old Europe’ and the so-called Visegrad group, composed of Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia. In their view, Viktor Orbàn’s xenophobic campaign against the ‘enforced relocation of non-Hungarians in Hungary’ supported by 98% of voters highlights this division, notwithstanding the small turnout (40% of registered voters) in the vote of October 2. The reluctance of Visegrad countries to receive (...)