Image: Frontex
The latest report from the Frontex Consultative Forum on Fundamental Rights reveals that people have been returned to Greece from Albania without removal orders, in breach of basic legal safeguards.
The Forum also found that unaccompanied children are being housed with adults in Albanian reception centres, violating child protection standards.
In North Macedonia, people held at the Vinojug Temporary Transit Centre – described as a hazard to health and safety for both migrants and staff – are being de facto detained without documentation or information, the report says.
The report also warns of possible illegal expulsions from North Macedonia to Greece.
In Serbia, observers noted a lack of access to food, water and clothing at reception points.
Anas Ambri, Communications Coordinator for the the Border Violence Monitoring Network, said of the report:
“The findings in the Consultative Forum’s most recent report show how the conditions in which Frontex operates in Albania, North Macedonia and Serbia are woefully inadequate and downright harmful to people on the move, especially unaccompanied children.
In the past, we have seen that national authorities generally use Frontex’ technocratic presence in their territory as a means to normalise some of their most egregious abuses.
The Consultative Forum’s latest remarks show that the EU border agency is well aware of the shortcomings of its interventions in Albania, North Macedonia and Serbia, and is choosing to look the other way, as it has done so far in Greece and Bulgaria. In our view, this makes them complicit in the same Fundamental Rights violations their presence engenders.”
Read more in the latest issue of Outsourcing Borders: Monitoring EU externalisation policy.
