EU Immigration and Asylum Law and Policy Droit et Politique de l'Immigration et de l'Asile de l'UE

By Nikolaos Sitaropoulos, Head of Division and Deputy to the Director, Office of the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights.

All views expressed herein are strictly personal.

A number of reports by international human rights organisations, like CPT and Amnesty International, have recorded  numerous cases of ill-treatment, including torture, suffered by migrants while under the control of Greek law enforcement officials. Despite the frequent reporting of such incidents there have not been any major cases brought before the European Court of Human Rights (‘Strasbourg Court’ or ‘the Court’) until recently. In 2003 the first application (Alsayed Allaham), concerning the ill-treatment of a Syrian migrant by police in Athens, was lodged. The 2007 judgment against Greece in Alsayed Allaham was followed by another judgment in 2012 in the Zontul case condemning Greece once more for failing to investigate the rape of a Turkish asylum-seeking detainee by a coast guard officer in Crete. Both cases demonstrated the need for structural changes in Greek law and practice in order to eradicate impunity and ill-treatment in the law enforcement sector.

In both cases the Court found violations of Article 3 (prohibition of torture) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) highlighting faults in judicial and administrative proceedings. In Alsayed Allaham it was noted that the appeal court that acquitted the policeman for ill-treatment relied on testimonies of five eye-witnesses, three of whom were police officers, and gave no credit to medical reports that had verified the applicant’s injuries. In addition, no weight was given to the fact that the Head of the Greek police himself had sanctioned the two policemen involved in the applicant’s ill-treatment. Continue reading »

Par Joanna Pétin, Centre de Documentation et de Recherches Européennes (CDRE)  

Le Professeur Labayle à la fin de son analyse de l’arrêt C.K. et autres, (C-578-16 PPU) se demandait s’il était« vraiment déraisonnable de penser que la requérante syrienne et son mari, dont l’enfant était né entre temps en Slovénie et qui était vraisemblablement éligible, pouvaient recevoir protection dans cet État en raison de leur vulnérabilité ». Une telle question n’a rien de déraisonnable. Bien au contraire. La prise en compte effective de la vulnérabilité particulière de la requérante mettait en effet à la charge des autorités et des juridictions slovènes une obligation de protection renforcée.

Avant toute chose, un rappel des faits s’impose. Mme C.K. et son mari H.F. sont entrés dans l’UE grâce à un visa délivré par les autorités croates. Après être entrés en Slovénie pour y déposer une demande de protection internationale, les époux, dont Mme C.K. enceinte, ont été placés sous le coup d’une procédure Dublin. Classiquement alors, en application du règlement Dublin, une requête de reprise en charge a été adressée à la Croatie, qui cette dernière l’a acceptée. Or, en l’espèce, en raison de son état de santé mentale fragilisé (dépression post-partum et tendances suicidaires périodiques), Mme C.K. alléguait un risque de détérioration grave de son état en cas de transfert. Se posait ainsi la question de la conformité d’un tel transfert au regard du droit de l’UE et du respect des droits fondamentaux de la requérante. Plus précisément, dans des circonstances telles que celles au principal, ce transfert conduit-il à exposer la requérante à un risque de traitement inhumain ou dégradant contraire à l’article 4 de la Charte ? Continue reading »

by Francesco Maiani, Associate Professor at the University of Lausanne, and Véronique Boillet, Assistant Professor at the University of Lausanne

Introduction

On the 9th February 2014, the Swiss electorate approved the referendum “Against mass immigration”. It thus introduced into the Swiss Federal Constitution a new article 121a which provides that Switzerland must manage immigration “in an autonomous manner” by means of quotas, that it must apply the principle of national preference, and that it may not conclude international agreements which are contrary to these principles. A transitional provision fixed a deadline of three years for the Government to renegotiate current international agreements which are contrary to these principles, and for the Parliament to adopt an implementing law.

Approved by a very small majority, the referendum initiative calls into question the very foundations of Swiss-EU relations. The text of the new article 121a of the Constitution is in effect irreconcilable with the Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons (AFMP), which excludes precisely all quotas and all rules of national preference, except on a transitional basis vis-à-vis nationals of new EU Member States (article 10 AFMP). Moreover, the denunciation of the AFMP would entail the automatic denunciation of a series of other agreements of primary importance by means of the “guillotine clause” (article 25 AFMP), and would call into question still more agreements. In practice, this would amount to a complete upturning of the treaty regime which has been patiently built up by Switzerland and the EU over the last twenty years. Continue reading »

par Francesco Maiani, Professeur associé à l’Université de Lausanne et Véronique Boillet, Professeure assistante à l’Université de Lausanne

Introduction

Le 9 février 2014, l’électorat suisse a approuvé l’initiative populaire « Contre l’immigration de masse ». Il a ainsi inscrit dans la Constitution fédérale suisse (Cst) un nouvel article 121a prévoyant que la Suisse gère « de manière autonome » l’immigration au moyen de contingents, applique le principe de la préférence nationale et refuse la conclusion d’accords internationaux contraires à ces principes. Une disposition transitoire fixait un délai de trois ans au Gouvernement pour renégocier les accords contraires en vigueur, et au Parlement pour adopter une loi d’application.

Approuvée à une très courte majorité, l’initiative a remis en question les fondements mêmes des relations Suisse-UE. Le texte de l’art. 121a Cst est en effet inconciliable avec l’Accord sur la libre circulation des personnes (ALCP), qui exclut précisément tout contingent et toute préférence nationale sauf à titre de mesure transitoire vis-à-vis des ressortissants des Etats nouvellement entrés dans l’UE (v. art. 10 ALCP). Par ailleurs, la dénonciation de l’ALCP entraînerait la dénonciation automatique d’une série d’autres accords de première importance par le jeu de sa « clause guillotine » (art. 25 ALCP), et la remise en question d’autres encore. En pratique, une remise à plat de l’édifice conventionnel patiemment bâti par la Suisse et l’UE pendant les vingt dernières années.
Continue reading »

Maarten den Heijer, Assistant Professor of International Law, University of Amsterdam

The Council continues its discussions on reforming the Dublin system. A key challenge for the Maltese Presidency is to find a compromise between those Member States supporting the European Commission’s proposal for a corrective allocation of asylum seekers and Member States advocating “flexible” or “effective” solidarity. The term flexible solidarity was first coined in a joint statement of the Visegrad-group (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) and described as enabling “Member States to decide on specific forms of contribution taking into account their experience and potential.” The statement also stressed that “any distribution mechanism should be voluntary”. In a subsequent non-paper, the concept was rebranded “effective solidarity”. Although the counter-proposals have met considerable reservation from other Member States and were cast aside in commentaries as offering only hollow buzzwords, I argue that the Slovak non-paper deserves serious attention. The solution for preventing future chaos on the European continent lies, in my view, not necessarily in the fair-sharing of people (whatever that precisely means). More important is to agree on a solidarity mechanism that will be predictable and guarantee that no Member State is left alone, to use the words of Commissioner Avramopoulos. Continue reading »

By Gabriel Almeida, Katharina Bamberg and James Kneale, OMNIA Coordination Team, Odysseus Network

This blog post sets out the main issues that animated the debate during the Odysseus Annual Conference 2017 “Beyond ‘Crisis’? The State of Immigration and Asylum Law and Policy in the EU”, which brought together legal and policy experts on asylum and migration from across Europe to critically assess the developments in asylum and migration law in 2016 and to investigate possible future trends. Continue reading »