Tuesday 9 July 2024
Joint Statement: The future EU must uphold the right to asylum in Europe
To ensure that refugees can access protection, states must guarantee the right to seek and enjoy asylum and
uphold their commitments to the international refugee protection system. This obligation applies to all EU
Member States under Article 18 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Yet, the recent and increasing
attempts by the EU and its Member States to evade their asylum responsibilities by outsourcing asylum
processing and refugee protection risk undermining the international protection system. The undersigned
human rights and humanitarian organisations are alarmed by these developments and urge the EU and its
Member States to safeguard the right to territorial asylum in Europe.
Discussions on the externalisation of asylum are not new, and have been consistently criticised, contested and
rejected over the years. The
European Commission
itself ruled out the legal feasibility of such models in 2018,
describing them as "neither desirable nor feasible”. Global protection needs are higher than ever and low and
middle income countries are hosting
75%
of the world’s refugees. Despite this, there has been a recent upsurge
in proposals to shift the processing of asylum applications, or indeed the responsibility for providing refugee
protection, to non-EU countries.
Italy, for instance, is currently seeking to process asylum applications of certain groups of asylum seekers
outside of its territory, from detention in Albania - which risks leading to prolonged,
automatic detention,
a
denial of access to fair asylum procedures with necessary procedural guarantees, and delayed disembarkation
for people rescued or intercepted at sea.
Others,
such as
Denmark
and
Germany,
are assessing the feasibility of
this type of arrangement.
15 EU Member States
and some political groups have endorsed similar shortsighted
measures to shift asylum processing outside EU territory and encouraged the European Commission to explore
ways to facilitate this through further legislative reform, including through a watered down ‘safe third country’
concept.
These attempts must be seen in the context of parallel containment efforts that seek to stem departures and
prevent the arrival of asylum seekers to EU territory through partnership agreements with third countries, with
little to no attention to the human rights records of those authorities. Over the past years, the European
Commission has continued bypassing public or parliamentary scrutiny and EU legislative frameworks as it
concludes ever more controversial and untransparent deals with non-EU countries, throwing at them large
sums of money with no genuine human rights safeguards or monitoring mechanisms, with the aim to contain
and deter migration and onwards movement of refugees toward the EU at seemingly any human cost.
Human costs of externalisation
Attempts to outsource asylum to third countries are a manifestation of states’ flagrant shirking of their legal
responsibility for people in need of protection. Outsourcing asylum processing and protection to third
countries who cannot provide effective protection or are already disproportionately hosting refugees, is
inconsistent with the objective and spirit of the Refugee Convention. It also obfuscates
jurisdiction and
responsibility,
making it more difficult for people to access justice when their rights are violated. Where
extraterritorial asylum processing has been tested, it has caused immeasurable human suffering and rights
violations.
Most notably,
Australia’s
offshore detention
scheme
demonstrates how these models have created
prolonged
confinement and restricted freedom of movement, deeply harming both the mental and physical health of
people seeking protection. Persistent human rights abuses arise as a result,
including the imposition of
conditions amounting to inhumane and degrading treatment,
neglect, a lack of access to legal aid, lack of
identification of and support for specific needs, and family separation. This should have served as a warning.