Analyses

29 November 2018

‘More police’ is not a synonym for ‘more security’

In May next year the mayoral elections for the city of Barcelona will take place. Candidates for the position have recently intensified their discourse over the perception of insecurity in the city, yet many experts recommend alternative solutions to simply increasing police presence in public places.

22 November 2018

From the “carrot and stick” to the “stick”: From GAMM (2005) to “Partnership Frameworks” (2016) in Africa

The EU has finally lost patience with a decade-long approach based on dialogue with countries in Africa calling for the return and readmission of refugees. Under plans adopted by the European Commission on 7 June 2016 the EU explicitly seeks to exploit Member States’ historical neo-colonial links to try to contain the movement of migrants and refugees.

16 November 2018

Undercover policing: the ‘alphabet soup’ of cross-border networks, groups and projects

The Undercover Policing Inquiry that has been in place in the UK since 2015 will never uncover the full truth about the police infiltration of social and political organisations whilst it has no remit to examine the activities of British officers outside England and Wales. This briefing outlines the transnational police groups, networks and organisations that are known to exist for the purpose of coordinating undercover police operations across state borders, primarily in Europe.

02 November 2018

Fingerprints in identity cards: who will oppose an unjustified and unnecessary proposal?

The Council and the Parliament are both currently discussing their negotiating positions on the proposal for new EU rules on national identity cards and residence documents issued to EU citizens and their family members when they reside in another Member State. The rules would harmonise certain aspects of these documents’ appearance and security features. Unless amendments proposed by left, liberal and green MEPs are taken into account, the Parliament will follow the Council and Commission in approving the mandatory fingerprinting of hundreds of millions of EU citizens.

29 October 2018

Decriminalising solidarity by promoting the regularisation of migrants

Translation of a speech given by Fulvio Vassallo Paleologo (Osservatorio Solidarieta Carta di Milano) at the session ‘Decriminalizing Solidarity: an ever more topical challenge’, Sabir Festival, Palermo, 13 October 2018.

23 October 2018

Wherever EU immigration policy rears its ugly head, violence and abuses follow

In the summer of 2018, after concerted efforts since 2014 by the EU and its Member States to block off the eastern (Turkey to Greece) and central (Tunisia and Libya to Italy) routes across the Mediterranean used by migrants and refugees to reach Europe, there was an increase in crossings using the western route (Morocco, and sometimes Algeria, to Spain). This was accompanied by an increase in deaths at sea and, in Morocco, extensive police operations to remove black African migrants from the north of the country, based on racial profiling and flagrant breaches of human rights.

10 July 2018

The “point of no return”: Interoperability morphs into the creation of a Big Brother centralised EU state database including all existing and future Justice and Home Affairs databases

This analysis looks at key critiques of EU plans to create a pervasive EU state database covering existing and future Justice and Home Affairs databases.

11 June 2018

Fingerprints in identity cards: unnecessary and unjustified

In order to facilitate free movement within the EU, the introduction of some mandatory EU-wide standards for identity cards may well be justified – but the proposal to fingerprint 175 million people as part of that is irrelevant and unjustified, and should be rejected by the European Parliament and the Council when they begin discussing the Commission’s proposals on standardising national identity cards.

28 May 2018

The law in times of exception

The rule of law means putting limits ‘from below’ and from outside upon the power of the state. In a strict conception of the democratic principle, the law cannot be a mechanism for covering up abuses of power, but a brake upon them or their primary antidote.

10 May 2018

The Tarnac affair: the shipwreck of the French ‘counter-terrorism struggle’

Ten years after the ‘Tarnac affair’ began with accusations of terrorism against a group of people from a libertarian community, the key individuals in the case, subsequently accused of sabotaging railway lines, have been cleared of all charges. The process has demonstrated a set-up designed to create an internal enemy.

17 April 2018

The seizure of the Open Arms boat as a paradigm of the European Union’s war against human rights

This analysis is based on the charges levelled at Proactiva Open Arms and was published in the wake of the crew’s interrogation and the impounding of the Open Arms rescue boat. It was written by the steering group (direttivo) of the Osservatorio Solidarietà della Carta di Milano, which was formally constituted in January 2018. It was originally published in Italian. A prosecutor has now ordered the freeing of the Open Arms, although judicial proceedings are ongoing. Statewatch will be publishing further information on the case.

10 April 2018

Suspicion files: German police databases on political activists

German authorities use a number of databases that collect data on political activists, even if they hadn't been sentenced or tried. Names are stored if people have had their identity checked, or if they have registered a demonstration under their name. Many are recorded under false designations. Such entries have raised concerns around them being used for further repression, including the revocation of journalists’ accreditation. Discriminatory and stigmatising labels have also been applied to people whose data is held by the police.

23 March 2018

Briefing: Another step towards ending EU law-making through secret trilogue meetings

“the Parliament maintains that the principle of transparency and the higher requirements of democracy do not and cannot constitute in themselves an overriding public interest [for the disclosure of documents].”

08 March 2018

Irregular migration to Spain: a state of exception

In late 2017, a prison-to-be was converted into a detention centre by Spain’s interior ministry, and used to hold some 500 Algerian nationals travelling to the country by dinghy. One of them subsequently died, isolated in his cell. The majority of detainees have now been deported, and an official investigation into the death remains open, despite a preliminary verdict of suicide. The penitentiary centre, meanwhile, has now officially opened as a prison, but the episode highlights how the treatment of such situations as ‘emergencies’ – despite the fact that they have been ongoing for decades – leads to numerous and serious human rights violations.

28 November 2017

Human rights violations at Spain’s southern border: steps towards restoring legality by Chris Jones

In mid-August 2014, a group of around 80 people attempted to enter Melilla, a Spanish enclave in North Africa, by climbing the three razor-wire topped fences that divide the territory from Morocco. The majority remained balanced atop a fence for around nine hours while some held onto their perches for up to 16 hours, “despite the suffocating heat and the lack of food and water,” as one news report noted at the time. But regardless of how long they held on, as soon as they came down from the fence they were all returned to Morocco by officers from Spain’s Guardia Civil.

22 November 2017

The widespread impunity over migrant deaths by Ana González-Páramo

Ten million stateless people wander or barely survive around the world without nationality, rights or basic freedoms. Another 65 million have been forced to leave their homes, including more than 22 million refugees, the equivalent of half the population of a country like Spain. About 244 million migrants risk their lives in search of a better future in other countries on a life-threatening journey, often facing inhumane conditions, illegal detentions, sexual assaults, violence, slavery or kidnappings. Sometimes, the journey turns out to be the final one.

08 September 2017

A Pyrrhic victory? The ECJ upholds the EU law on relocation of asylum-seekers by Steve Peers

How should the EU deal with the perceived ‘migrant/refugee crisis’? It has done a number of things, but back in September 2015, when the numbers of arrivals were peaking, it did something truly remarkable – requiring Member States to relocate 160,000 asylum-seekers from the ‘frontline’ states of Italy and Greece, which were bearing most of the burden of new arrivals....

20 July 2017

Policing the internet: how Europol takes action against undesirable content online by Kilian Vieth

Europol removes content from the internet. This approach goes beyond regular measures in the fight against terrorism propaganda and mixes police work and media regulation. Should a police agency be responsible for the surveillance and control of Facebook posts and tweets?

25 May 2017

Counter-terrorism and the inflation of EU databases by Heiner Busch and Matthias Monroy

The topic of counter-terrorism in Europe remains closely linked to the development and expansion of police (and secret service) databases. This was the case in the 1970s, after 11 September 2001 and has also been the case since 2014, when the EU Member States started working on their action plans against 'foreign terrorist fighters'.

 

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