Archive
The EU’s military mission against Mediterranean migration: what “deterrent effect”? by Chris Jones
Operation Sophia, the EU’s military mission targeting migrant smuggling in the Mediterranean, has a “deterrence effect” that “by its presence alone, enhances security in the Mediterranean,” according to an internal report by the Italian naval officer in charge of the deployment. Yet as people continue crossing the central Mediterranean, and increasing numbers of them die whilst trying to do so, the only reasonable question to be asked is: what deterrent effect? Read More
Eurodac: Member States want wider police access to biometric database despite most having never made use of it by Chris Jones
A European Commission proposal to expand the Eurodac biometric database has provided the perfect opportunity for national interior ministries to demand that police forces be able to obtain asylum-seekers’ and irregular migrants’ data more easily, despite the fact that half of all Member States do “not yet have experience with law enforcement access” to the system, according to an official document obtained by Statewatch. Read More
Migration, EU cooperation and authoritarianism by Theodore Baird
The EU is actively cooperating with authoritarian regimes to control international movement while ignoring the disastrous human rights records of these regimes. Read More
In support of the Amnesty International report: Other stories of violence in the hotspot system
I have picked up a sheet of paper on which I had written, in one go, a series of notes which I had not even re-read yet, until today. Less than a year ago, it had been put away without even knowing what to o with them, after a round of consultations with friends who are legal experts and lawyers. Who should I give it to? With what evidence could I support those words? There wasn’t any way to use them, even though each of them had the weight of a boulder. Read More
Unaccompanied child-asylum seekers in Greece: third-party intervention before the ECHR
These written submissions are presented on behalf of Statewatch, hereinafter “the Intervener”, pursuant to the grant of permission of the President of the First Section of the Court notified in a letter dated 6 July 2016 and addressed to Statewatch by the Section Registrar. Read More
Civilizing the torture and execution trade
Earlier this month, the European Parliament and Council finally agreed to outlaw the export, brokering and promotion of torture and execution equipment from Europe. Such equipment includes guillotines, hanging ropes, lethal injection drugs, multi-barbed steel ‘sting sticks’, electroshock batons and tools familiar to torturers of old: leg irons and wall cuffs to hang prisoners from walls and ceilings, thumbscrews, neck chains and other medieval paraphernalia. Read More
The visible hand: the European Union’s Security Industrial Policy
The EU has a long-standing ambition to create an “area of freedom, security and justice”, as set out in Article 67 of the Lisbon Treaty. A more recent counterpart to this ideal is the plan to create a “true internal market for security”, in which companies will be able to sell security technologies, products and services to customers in any EU Member State without being hampered by differing regulatory or technical standards. The first formal announcement of this new policy came in 2012, when the European Commission published the Security Industrial Policy (SIP), with the “overarching aim” to “enhance growth and increase employment in the EU's security industry.” Read More
A missed opportunity to open up secret trilogue decision-making in the EU
On 26 May 2015 the EU Ombudsman opened an Inquiry into “the transparency of trilogues”. On 12 July 2016 the Ombudsman reached a decision and made proposals to the Council of the European Union, the European Parliament and the European Commission. On the face of it the proposals look like an advance in the openness of trilogues - but are they? Read More
Viewpoint: Anamorphosis of the state – The management of order in Europe
The practices adopted by the French police over the last few months, and especially between the end of April and 18 May [2016], shocked the majority of peaceful demonstrators, causing many of them harm and injuries. On 17 May, the police staged demonstrations to protest against ‘violence against cops’ [violence anti-flics] and on 18 May the trade union stewards’ service badly beat up some so-called casseurs [term used to describe hooligans, vandals or troublemakers]. Testimonies
and debates surrounding these events have been plentiful (you can see such reports by Médiapart, a few television programmes and even in “Le Monde” and “Libération”). However, a more in-depth reflection on what happened is missing, as is a comparative perspective with similar facts which have been observed over a longer period in other countries that claim to be democratic. Read More
The Orbanisation of EU asylum law: the latest EU asylum proposals
There have been a number of EU proposals to deal with the perceived ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe over the last year. The latest batch, issued this week, are perhaps the most significant to date. They concern three related issues: visas (notably a short-term Schengen visa waiver for Turkish nationals); Schengen (partly suspending the open borders rules for six months); and asylum (changing the Dublin system on responsibility for asylum seekers, and creating a new EU asylum agency). Further proposals on legal migration and other EU asylum laws are coming in the months ahead. Read More