ECRE Weekly Bulletin – 6 September 2024

6 September 2024

The Canary Islands government has accused the Spanish state of ‘abandoning’ its responsibility towards the archipelago as it faces a serious migration “crisis”, and has invited European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to witness the situation.
Up to 1,500 people have swum from Morocco to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has visited Gambia, Mauritania and Senegal, and signed agreements on promoting regular migration and tackling people smuggling.
A video that has circulated on social media appears to show a Spanish police boat running over a dinghy carrying four people dinghy and knocking one of them into the sea close to the Spanish enclave of Melilla.

On 2 September, the Canary Islands government accused the Spanish state of ‘abandoning’ its responsibility towards the archipelago as it faces a serious migration “crisis”. Its president, Fernando Clavijo, has proposed, among other measures, to open a “legal debate” over Madrid’s “neglect of its functions”. “I don’t know whether the Spanish government is clear about this or not. I am clear that the Spanish government is abandoning the Canary Islands, and that is something that must be conveyed,” he told public broadcaster Canarias Radio. There have been 22,304 recorded arrivals on the Canary Islands so far in 2024. Several ECRE member organisations have commented on the situation. “We are not facing a migration crisis. We are facing a humanitarian and human rights crisis,” X posted the Red Acoge Federation. “There is no migration crisis. There is a humanitarian emergency. Of people risking their lives and fleeing horror and misery. Of traumatized children who continue to suffer because they are denied the right to live in dignity,” added Movimiento por la Paz (MPDL).

The Canary Islands government has also invited European Commission (EC) President Ursula von der Leyen to visit the archipelago in order to witness the situation. On 27 August, its spokesperson, Alfonso Cabello, wrote that the EC president’s presence would be seen as a “symbol of the European Union’s commitment to this outermost territory”. In addition to the invitation, Cavijo called for greater EU support “so that the Canary Islands do not have to shoulder all of Europe’s migratory pressure on its own,” stressing that: “In the end, it’s a pressure for Europe because they are arriving in Europe, in Spain, and not just on the Canary Islands”. ECRE member organisation the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid (CEAR) commented on Europe’s role in an X thread in which it noted that: “thousands of people have disappeared on this increasingly busy and increasingly dangerous journey”. It added: “Meanwhile, Europe is moving towards externalising and tightening borders focused on preventing people from arriving, rather than offering protection solutions and guarantees of rights”. “We need an open Europe that advocates for legal pathways now, seeking protection without risking one’s life, and lasting solutions so that refugees can live in dignity,” it concluded.

Large numbers of people have also arrived in Ceuta in North Africa. On 26 August, up to 1,500 people swam from Morocco to the Spanish enclave and approximately 700 of them were intercepted by Spanish police. ECRE member organisation the Andalucía Acoge Federation X posted about one of the tragedies linked to the situation in Ceuta: “This situation repeats itself every year. It is not a migration crisis, it is a permanent reality,” it wrote, adding: “We need a stable reception system, reinforced with resources, infrastructure and joint political decision-making by the Spanish and European authorities”. “We insist that the governments of Spain and the EU facilitate and enable legal and safe paths that guarantee the right to life of people who migrate, and that they invest in a dignified and permanent reception system,” it concluded.

On 4 September, the Spanish Minister for Youth and Children, Sira Rego, announced that the Spanish government was drafting a contingency plan with the EU to help relieve the situation in the Canary Islands and Ceuta. In addition, the executive director of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex), Hans Leijtens has also encouraged the Spanish government to submit a formal request for support in order to enable the agency to co-operate with Spanish authorities.

On 27 August, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez visited Gambia, Mauritania and Senegal, three of the main countries of origin for the people who have been arriving on the Canary Islands. He signed agreements with the governments of the three countries to, inter alia, promote regular migration in the form of circular migration programmes and tackle people smuggling. During the visit, Sánchez spoke of the need to manage migration while fighting against people smugglers and others who “take advantage of the terrible conditions and desperation of those who resort to irregular migration”. Commenting on the trip, the Andalucía Acoge Federation X posted: “Enough already! We are concerned that there is an attempt to criminalise migrants who have no legal option and enter irregularly, with policies focused on devaluing the condition of those who are risking their lives for a future. It is not a question of capacity, nor of closing and outsourcing borders, but of the will and responsibility of the Spanish government, which must assume its role with constant, coherent and humanitarian public measures on foreigners, which do not change depending on the moment”. The Red Acoge Federation used the opportunity to comment on what it perceived as a “rise of discriminatory discourse around the migration reality” when it X posted: “No one wants to put their life at risk, they are forced to do so due to the lack of regular and safe routes. Agreements with third countries based on the commodification of people or the externalisation of borders impose limitations on the mobility of people. Representing migration as a security problem responds to particular interests that seek to legitimise racist and xenophobic partisan proposals”.

On 26 August, footage circulated on social media of what appeared to be a Spanish police boat running over a dinghy carrying four people and knocking one of them into the sea close to Melilla. According to the Moroccan police, no deaths resulted from the incident. However, the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH) appeared to cast doubt on this claim when it X posted about what it described as a “criminal attack” and claimed that the collision was deliberate. It described “total co-operation” between the Moroccan police and the Spanish police and demanded the opening of an investigation after “the body of a Moroccan migrant was received (…) at the morgue of the Hassani hospital in Nador”. In a Facebook post on 3 September, the Melilla-based NGO Solidary Wheels wrote that the Spanish Ministry of the Interior had “rejected the opening of an investigation”.

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The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has estimated that more than 1,000 people have died or been reported missing in the central Mediterranean Sea since the start of 2024.
Civilian search and rescue (SAR) organisations have commemorated the tenth anniversary of the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) rescue operation on 25 August 2014 that marked the start of a decade of civilian sea rescue in the central Mediterranean Sea.
A new report by Human Rights Watch has revealed that authorities in Cyprus have pushed Syrian refugees back to Lebanon from where they have been forcibly returned to Syria.
The Greek coastguard has reported two incidents of people smugglers pushing migrants overboard to avoid arrest in the Aegean Sea and has fired on a migrant boat resulting in the death of one passenger.
The Doctors Without Borders (MSF) rescue ship the Geo Barents has been issued with a 60-day detention order in Italy due to alleged violations of maritime security measures.
ECRE member organisation the aditus Foundation and its founder Dr Neil Falzon have received the 2024 PRO ASYL Human Rights Award.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has estimated that more than 1,000 people have died or gone missing in the central Mediterranean Sea since the start of 2024. According to data published by IOM Libya, there were 421 confirmed deaths and 603 people reported missing between 1 January and 17 August. During the same period, 13,763 people were intercepted at sea and taken back to Libya.

On 25 August, civilian search and rescue (SAR) organisations commemorated a decade of civilian sea rescue in the central Mediterranean Sea. The date marked the tenth anniversary of a rescue operation that was undertaken by the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) organisation on 25 August 2014. Reflecting on the anniversary, the head of the SAR NGO Sea-Eye, Gorden Isler, decried the lack of state-organised SAR efforts. “Over the past ten years, civilian sea rescue organisations have taken over the responsibility generally held by EU member states. Much has changed politically in that time, but the humanitarian situation in the Mediterranean remains dire,” he said, adding: “Instead of relying on state-organised sea rescues, Europe continues its isolation policy. Laws against civilian sea rescue organisations have been created in Italy and, worst of all, thousands of people are still dying every year in search of asylum and protection”. “The EU Member States must stop criminalising our work and finally create a European state sea rescue organisation with a clear mission to save as many lives as possible in the Mediterranean,” he concluded.

The tenth anniversary of the start of organised civilian SAR operations in the central Mediterranean Sea came a week after seven people died when a superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily. The scale of the efforts involved in trying to rescue the victims of the Bayesian yacht tragedy and the global media attention that it generated have led to accusations by several SAR NGOs of “double standards”. In a statement to the Guardian, Sea-Eye said: “Sadly, it makes a difference in the media, in our society and in politics, who is drowning. We have noticed that the coverage of the situation in the Mediterranean, of tragedies or of our rescues in recent months has not been nearly as extensive as in the case of the Sicilian shipwreck in recent days”. Another SAR NGO Sea-Watch posted on Instagram that, days after the sinking of the Bayesian, its efforts to alert authorities about a dinghy with 43 people on board that was sinking elsewhere in the central Mediterranean Sea had been ignored. “That’s no coincidence; it’s the EU’s double standard,” it wrote. Commenting on the apparent discrepancy between the level of authorities’ efforts in different rescue situations, Luca Casarani from the SAR NGO Mediterranea Saving Humans said: “It is not wrong to intervene to save rich individuals aboard yachts or tourists; what is wrong is the inconsistency in applying these rescue strategies to save migrants in need”. His comments were echoed in the Sea-Watch statement: “We see active non-assistance for people fleeing to safety every day. Life-saving efforts must not depend on the colour of someone’s skin or the size of their wallet,” it wrote.

A new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) has revealed that authorities in Cyprus have pushed Syrian refugees back to Lebanon from where they have been forcibly returned to Syria. According to the report, the Lebanese army intercepts Syrian refugees who are trying to reach Europe and expels them to Syria whilst the Cypriot coastguard and other Cypriot security forces send Syrians whose boats have reached Cyprus back to Lebanon. Nadia Hardman from HRW described it as “a situation where people are held in a no man’s land between Lebanon and Syria and a collusion between the Lebanese and Cypriot authorities and smuggling networks to send back refugees to Syria”. HRW has accused Cyprus of “violating the prohibition on indirect, chain, or secondary refoulement, by expelling Syrian refugees to Lebanon where they risk onward expulsion to Syria”. It has also called on the EU and other EU member states to, inter alia, hold Cyprus accountable for human rights violations against migrants and asylum seekers, and state that no parts of Syria are safe for the return of refugees. On 4 September, in response to a request by EUobserver, the European Commission “declined to say” if it considered any parts of Syria to be safe for returns.

According to the Greek coastguard, people smugglers who operate in the eastern Aegean Sea may have developed a dangerous new tactic to avoid capture: pushing some of their passengers overboard. The German Press Agency reported two incidents based on accounts from the Greek coast guard during the weekend of 24-25 August. In the first incident, five people were forced to jump into the sea from a speedboat that was being pursued by a Greek coastguard vessel off the island of Kos. In the second, three people were pushed off a speedboat off the island of Symi under similar circumstances.

The two incidents occurred a day after a 39-year-old migrant was killed “probably by a bullet” after the Greek coastguard opened fire on a boat that was carrying 14 people off Symi en route from Türkiye. According to a coastguard statement, “Warning shots were fired to prevent an immediate risk to the coastguard vessel and its crew (…) and subsequently targeted shots were fired at the outboard engine aimed at immobilising the speedboat”. The nationality of the dead man was not confirmed but it is believed that he may have been from Kuwait. A Greek prosecutor has reportedly ordered the arrest of the coastguard officer who fired the shots.

On 26 August, authorities in Italy issued a 60-day detention order to the Geo Barents rescue vessel. The ship, which is operated by the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF), received the detention order after it undertook several rescue operations on 23 August before docking in the port of Salerno. According to MSF, it is alleged to have “failed to provide timely information to the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre and to have endangered people’s lives”. In a statement published on 28 August, MSF’s Juan Matias Gil said: “We have been sanctioned for simply fulfilling our legal duty to save lives”. He added: “This is yet another example of how much the Piantedosi Decree not only contravenes international and European laws but is also contradictory to the obligations to act in the face of a state of necessity when human lives are at risk. The authorities are forcing us to prioritise either saving people at sea or the freedom of the rescue ship”. The current detention order is the third to have been issued to the Geo Barents and the twenty-third since the enactment of the ‘Piantedosi Decree’ (Decree Law No.1/2023) in January 2023. MSF has urged the Italian authorities to “release the Geo Barents from this detention to fulfil its duty of rescuing lives and cease immediately obstructing humanitarian lifesaving assistance at sea”.

Elsewhere, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has confirmed that it will monitor the implementation of the Italy-Albania Protocol. In a statement published on 14 August, the UNHCR wrote that it would undertake a monitoring role for three months “to ensure that the right to seek asylum is protected and that the processes put in place under the Protocol are consistent with relevant international and regional human rights standards, are fair, and promote protection and solutions for those in need of international protection”. It added that the funding for the monitoring mission would come from sources other than either Italy or Albania in order to ensure its independence, and that it would it would make its recommendations available to the Italian government and other interested actors at the end of the three-month period.

On 29 August, 38 Maltese civil society organisations, including ECRE member organisations the aditus Foundation and Jesuit Refugee Service Malta, issued a joint press statement in response to the recent arrest and detention of a number of Ethiopian nationals. According to the signatories, “these individuals are now being threatened with deportation after having lived and worked legally in Malta for many years, with the knowledge and permission of the authorities”. The organisations have appealed to the Maltese government to “immediately release the detained Ethiopian nationals” and “create a pathway to regularisation for these and other rejected asylum-seekers who have lived and worked in Malta for years with the authorisation of the competent authorities”.

The aditus Foundation and its founder Dr Neil Falzon have been awarded the 2024 PRO ASYL Foundation Human Rights Award. In a press release issued on 3 September, Karl Kopp from ECRE member organisation the PRO ASYL Foundation said: “Neil Falzon and the team at the aditus foundation use their extensive legal expertise and provide personal support for survivors of boat disasters and victims of human rights violations in detention centers in Malta. The awardees work under very challenging political conditions. With courage and determination, Neil Falzon and his team oppose the ongoing erosion of refugee and human rights and the weakening of the rule of law in Malta, as well as in Europe”.

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AIDA Briefing – Asylum in Europe: The situation of applicants for international protection in 2023

The Asylum Information Database (AIDA) is managed the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) and contains detailed information on asylum procedures, reception conditions, the detention of asylum seekers and the content of international protection in 23 European countries. It is relied upon by a wide range of actors, including European and national policy-makers, legal practitioners and courts.

AIDA country reports are written by national experts in co-operation with a variety of stakeholders, including civil society organisations, lawyers and national authorities, and edited and verified by ECRE.

The 2024 briefing paper provides key examples of the general trends that could be observed across asylum systems in Europe in 2023 as set out in AIDA:

Although asylum systems remained in place and functioning across Europe, the rights of people in need of international protection were still being regularly violated and significant gaps in national asylum systems remained.
There was a continued overall positive response by European countries to the displacement from Ukraine which, although it created additional challenges, also demonstrated that prolonged management of large-scale displacement was still possible.
Access to asylum the quality and length of asylum procedures remained issues of particular concern.
Reception systems came under pressure in an increasing number of countries, often due to a lack of sufficiently robust contingency planning and the widespread detention of asylum applicants.

The full briefing paper is available here.

For more information about the AIDA database or to read other AIDA reports, please visit the AIDA website.

See also

AIDA Country Report on Serbia – 2023 Update

The updated AIDA Country Report on Serbia provides a detailed overview of legislative and practice-related developments in asylum procedures, reception conditions, detention of asylum seekers and content of international protection in 2023. It also includes an annex which provides an overview of temporary protection (TP).

In 2023, 108,808 arrivals were registered in Serbia (slightly fewer than in 2022). However, only 1,654 people officially registered asylum applications and only 193 then lodged a first-time asylum application, thus confirming the trend of Serbia mainly being a transit country.

A significant number of Russian and Ukrainian citizens continued to arrive in Serbia in 2023. However, their legal status was mainly regulated outside the Asylum Act. The Asylum Office delivered 111 decisions concerning 154 asylum applicants in 2023. 36 decisions regarding 50 applicants were rejected on the merits, while six decisions resulted in asylum being granted to nine applicants. Most decisions resulted in the procedure being discontinued due to applicants having absconded. At second and third instances, most cases were rejected. In addition to continued concerns regarding the quality of the credibility assessment at first instance and the effectiveness of appeal processes, stakeholders also highlighted issues regarding the quality of legal aid, which may impact both access to the procedure, status determination at first instance and access to effective appeals.

Access to the territory and to the asylum procedure remained extremely difficult in 2023. People continued to be subjected to numerous human rights violations at the border by the Serbian Border Police, including arbitrary deprivation of liberty, ill-treatment, expulsion without examination of individual circumstances and risks of refoulement etc. Pushbacks notably occurred towards Bulgaria, Montenegro and North Macedonia. In addition, numerous people were also subjected to pushbacks towards Serbia from neighbouring (notably EU) countries. According to the Hungarian authorities, at least 100,128 third country nationals were pushed back from Hungary alone towards Serbia in 2023 (and at least 388,753 since 2016). Pushbacks from Bosnia, Croatia and Romania were also reported on a daily basis.

Access to the territory and to the asylum procedure at Serbian airports (mainly Belgrade but also Niš and Kraljevo) was also a serious concern in 2023 due to worrying practices of refusal of entry and forcible removals of people in need of international protection. Refusal of entry practices took place in conjunction with arbitrary deprivation of liberty in transit zones where people were not allowed to access legal aid, were deprived of their personal phones and/or were denied the opportunity to lodge an appeal against the refusal of entry decision. In total, Serbian authorities made 1,664 decisions to refuse entry in 2023. Although this represented a decrease from 2022, it also occurred at the same time that Serbia reintroduced visa regimes for citizens of countries from which asylum applicants had arrived in previous years.

In stark contrast to these practices, there were no reports or recorded incidents regarding people fleeing Ukraine being denied access to the territory. TP was extended several times, most recently until March 2025. Of the 1,482 individuals who have been granted protection since March 2022, 746 benefited from extensions of their TP permits in 2023.

Finally, a few improvements were noted regarding the integration of people who were granted asylum as they now have the automatic right to work when they are recognised as beneficiaries of international protection (asylum applicants also automatically obtain the right after six months) without first going through a work permit procedure and its associated costs. In addition, people who have been granted protection can now apply for permanent residency, the final step before naturalisation, after three years. The first positive decisions on the matter were already delivered in early 2024. Also, following a European Court of Human Rights ruling, people who have been granted international protection can now access travel documents in Serbia, the first of which were issued in early 2024.

The full report is available here and the annex on temporary protection is available here.

For more information about the AIDA database or to read other AIDA reports, please visit the AIDA website.

Asylum and Forced Displacement in the EU Enlargement Process: Contributions to inform the European Commission 2024 Enlargement Package in the area of asylum

ECRE has published the assessment by a number of civil society experts of certain questions related to asylum and forced displacement in the EU enlargement process. These expert contributions are intended to inform the country reports on Albania, Kosovo, Serbia and Ukraine in the framework of the 2024 Enlargement Package.

In order to provide an assessment of the state of play and progress made by the candidate countries regarding their integration into the EU, the European Commission (EC) adopts an annual ‘enlargement package’, which includes reports on each country’s implementation of required reforms and provides guidance on the respective priorities. In November 2023, the EC published the 2023 Enlargement Package, which provided an assessment of the accession progress of the six Western Balkans countries plus Georgia, Moldova, Türkiye and Ukraine.

The contributions in this report are aimed at filling the gap in the area of the provision of information by civil society organisations about the situation on asylum and forced displacement in relation to the process of EU integration in candidate countries. Expert contributions provide analysis of both asylum in the fundamental pillars of the accession process, as well as a more detailed overview of the specific challenges in certain chapters of the EU acquis, specifically the areas of judiciary, fundamental rights, justice, freedom and security.

Part I of the country contributions covers the fundamental pillars of the accession process – the alignment with the Copenhagen criteria, which include political and economic criteria, as well as the ability to take on and implement effectively the obligations of EU membership. The contributions cover inter alia such questions as the level of civil society participation in asylum- and migration-related policy-making, the state’s policies on naturalisation, the situation pertaining to the right to work and access to education for asylum applicants and protection holders, the independence and capacity of administrative bodies responsible for examining applications for international protection, the functioning of oversight/monitoring bodies to safeguard the quality of the related decision-making processes, and the capacity of national monitoring bodies to oversee the use of EU financial assistance for integration.

Part II is focused on the state of play regarding the countries’ alignment with the EU legislation related to certain aspects of asylum and migration. It covers the questions related to the three relevant chapters of the EU acquis (i.e. Chapter 23 (Judiciary and fundamental rights), Chapter 24 (Justice, freedom and security) and Chapter 18 (Statistics)). The analysis of the situation in these three areas includes questions related to the independence of the judiciary and access to judicial remedy for asylum seekers and other migrants, the management of return processes, the implementation of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, certain aspects related to access to the asylum procedure and the rights of applicants for protection, the use of safe country concepts, and the mechanisms for collecting, sharing and analysing statistics on migration.

The contributions also offer recommendations for improving the standards and practices related to the management of asylum systems and wider migration policies of each of the four countries covered.

ECRE Legal Note: The Guarantees of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights in Respect of Legal Counselling, Assistance and Representation in Asylum Procedures

ECRE has published a legal note analysing the right to legal aid and legal counselling for asylum applicants under the new Asylum Procedures Regulation (APR).

The analysis is focused on the relevant EU law standards in respect of legal aid and legal counselling and their application in practice, particularly Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which ensures the right to an effective remedy and fair trial. The note also incorporates elements from the European Court of Human Rights’ jurisprudence and other Council of Europe standards.

Article 16 APR (legal counselling) and Article 17 APR (legal aid) are analysed separately with a view to understanding the relationship between the two provisions and the legal standards that should inform their implementation. Particular attention is paid to the definition of legal counselling as a broad right that goes beyond the right to information and ensures individual advice and guidance at first instance.

Finally, the note presents recommendations for preventing or overcoming potential implementation challenges through a rights-based approach focused on robust legal counselling services that guarantee timely individual advice to anyone who needs it, and reliable legal aid systems that ensure effective access to asylum.

In Memoriam: Frits Florin (1937 – 2024)

The European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) is sorry to share the sad news about its co-founder Frits Florin who died on 15 August 2024 aged 87.

Frits was the director of the Foundation for Refugee Students (UAF) from 1969 to 1976 and co-founded ECRE in 1974.