Mission Report 2021

For more than 20 years, the EU has been developing cooperation with non-member countries (so-called "third countries") to outsource its border control. Identified as departure countries and then as transit countries for migration to the EU, the Balkan countries have been rapidly integrated into the core of this externalisation strategy. This has been particularly the case since the so-called "migration crisis" of 2015, when almost one million persons, mainly from the Middle East, were (...)

Informal and illegal detention in Spain, Greece, Italy and Germany

The report of Migreurop “Locked up and excluded": Informal and illegal detention in Spain, Greece, Italy and Germany” looks back at how four EU member states practiced the administrative detention of non- nationals in 2019. The report shows how, in both first arrival countries such as Italy, Greece and Spain and in a presumed destination country, Germany, the detention of non-nationals is evolving, taking new forms and based on new grounds. In particular, this report argues that, in 2019, (...)

Mission Report Gisti - Migreurop 2019

On Friday 28th February 2020, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan decided unilaterally to suspend the EU-Turkey deal of 2016, which, over the past four years, transformed five Greek islands in the Aegean sea into open prisons for migrants, the infamous ‘hotspots’. Already, Turkey had repeatedly used this agreement as a blackmailing device, threatening to re-open its borders with the EU. Finally, this threat was carried out in response to criticism from European leaders following a Turkish (...)

Joint mission report FTDES Migreurop - June 2020

« The answer is clear, and the rejection is definite… We do not have the adequate capabilities and abilities to establish accommodation centers ». With these words, Mr. Taher Cherif, the Tunisian Ambassador to the European Union, expressed the rejection of Tunisia to establish camps within its territory to receive and “assemble” migrants that the European Union refuses to take. This rejection was in response to the European Commission’s proposal to create a “Landing Platform” in North Africa for (...)