Launched in 1999 and updated regularly, Statewatch News includes our own reporting and writing as well as articles, announcements, documents and analyses from elsewhere on civil liberties, EU policies and state practices. You can receive updates in your inbox by signing up to our mailing list, or use our RSS feed to get instant alerts.
A British judge has ruled that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange should not be extradited to the United States on the grounds that his mental health condition would make him a suicide risk, given the detention conditions he would be likely to face in a "supermax" prison in the USA.
Earlier this month, the European Commission published its new counter-terrorism agenda, alongside a proposal to expand the powers of EU policing agency Europol. Initial reactions from civil society to the proposals have been sharply critical, with the European Network Against Racism saying the plan "includes a range of initiatives that double down on policies and practices that are discriminatory, criminalizing and racializing."
The Court of Justice of the EU has ruled that Hungary's actions in the field of migration and asylum are against the law.
Up to a third of Malta's prison population is made up of people who have been jailed for offences involving false passports. Some 250 people are currently behind bars for such offences. Whilst sentencing a Moroccan national to six months for use of a false passport, a magistrate recently said "that new facilities would need to be built to accommodate such offenders if the trend continued," and said there was a "dire need for a European and International mechanism for dealing with such cases."
Two men have been found guilty of the manslaughter of 39 people who suffocated to death in a lorry whislt being smuggled into the UK in October 2019. Two others were found guilty of conspiring to unlawfully smuggle people into the country, while the two ringleaders of the operation - which had been ongoing for years - pled guilty to manslaughter before trial.
As part of an international campaign to lift the lid on data privacy violations, The Privacy Collective is asking some of Europe’s leading experts why online privacy matters.
Claims by the Greek Migration Minister, Notis Mitarakis, that NGOs have been helping organise the irregular arrival of people onto the Aegean islands, have been debunked by a media investigation. Mitarakis' claims were made following the publication by the government of four video interviews with Somali citizens, which the government claimed proved they receiving illegal assistance from NGOs to arrive on Greek territory. However, the videos raise a number of questions that the government has failed to answer.
A new report from the European Civic Forum looks at the how civil society has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, and how the pandemic has affected the work of civil society organisations. The report includes a general analysis of the situation in the EU, seven interviews and six case studies looking at the situation for LGBTI people and the situation in the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Ireland and Slovenia.
The EU has finalised the contracting of the €6 billion it owes to Turkey as part of the March 2016 deal to keep refugees off European territory. The failure to provide all the funds promised was one reason cited by Turkey in March, when it decided to stop preventing departures to Greece, leading to a spike in arrivals, a diplomatic crisis between the EU and Turkey, the provision of more assistance from other EU member states to Greece for border security, and a worsening situation for people arriving in Greece.
64 civil society organisations have called on the forthcoming Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the EU - in post from January-June 2021 - to ensure corporate interests do not receive privileged access to decision-making; to ensure an absolute minimum of dealings with lobbyists for the fossil fuel industry; publish records of meetings with lobbyists; reject any form of sponsorship for its activities; improve legislative transparency by publishing minutes of meetings; and to publish its positions on new EU legal proposals prior to discussions in the Council.
The Protection and Security Advisory Group (PASAG) advises the European Commission on the content of the EU security research programme, which provides funds for research and development on new surveillance and security technologies. PASAG recently published a report entitled 'AI and security opportunities and risks: Towards a trustworthy AI based on European values', which argues that artificial intelligence (AI) "can have extensive application in public security and cyber security, if sufficiently large data sets are available," but calls for more training, research and education to make AI "secure, reliable, unbiased and explainable."
Over 1,000 people have died in the Mediterranean in 2020 and EU member states are still halting civilian search and rescue initiatives. An overview produced by the EU's Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) documents nine new legal proceedings against civil search and rescue ships seeking to operate in the Mediterranean since June 2020, making a total of 50 proceedings since the beginning of 2018. The proceedings launched since June are all administrative in nature, but some of the 50 invoke criminal law against the crews of rescue ships, the organisations operating them or the vessels themselves.
Surveillance technologies used against human rights activists in the countries of the Middle East, North Africa and the Arabian Gulf should be halted, NGOs said at a recent online event organised by the Gulf Centre for Human Rights. Software sold by companies such as FinFisher (based in Germany) and Hacking Team (based in Italy) has been used by states to monitor, track and undermine the work of people in a variety of countries in the region.
Writing for the European Policy Centre, Green MEP Tineke Strik denounces the fact that “pushbacks at our external borders have become a widespread practice, often accompanied by violence... Their systematic character reveals that they are not only a matter of practice but also of policies in many EU border countries.” She calls for a wider scope of the newly proposed monitoring mechanism, stricter enforcement of the rules, and stronger scrutiny from the European Parliament and Commission.
The UK's foreign intelligence agency, MI6 (officially known as the Secret Intelligence Service, SIS) was running an overseas agent authorised to engage in serious criminality who had "probably" crossed some of the "red lines" set out by MI6 with regard to criminal activities. However, the agency failed to make this clear to the foreign secretary - who is responsible for authorising such operations - until it was pointed out by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner, an oversight body tasked with monitoring the surveillance and spying powers of the UK's policing and intelligence agencies.
An extensive overview published by the Graduate Centre Geneva's Global Health Centre reviews the available evidence on biosecurity research and development (R&D), defined as "the development of medical products and strategies to address biological threats to security." The review finds that the literature generally refers to efforts to address chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) agents and emerging infectious diseases, and that while such research has historically been the preserve of military actors, in particular the US military - concerned with "force protection" and national security - a broader array of institutions has become active in the field in recent years.
The Council of the EU and the European Parliament have reached a provisional agreement on new rules for the Visa Information System (VIS), which contains information on all applicants for short-stay Schengen visas. Under the new rules, the system will be extended to include certain data on long-stay visas, more data will be held on short-stay visa applicants (including by lowering the fingerprinting age from 12 to 6 years of age) and the system will be made 'interoperable' with other EU databases. New checks will be performed on visa applicants by cross-referencing their data with those databases, and the system will also make use of a profiling tool to assess the potential 'risk' posed by visa applicants. "Technical" discussions are ongoing to finalise the text.
Refugees on the Greek island of Lesvos living in the 'Moria 2' camp - set up to replace Moria when it burnt down in September - are living amongst mud and water, with inadequate access to hygiene and in the presence of old military equipment, such as mortar shells. The camp was hastily constructed on a former military firing range after the destruction of Moria. Photos and videos shared by residents and activist groups have documented the situation. The Dunya Collective, who recently shared a photo of a mortar shell, said: "Over 7,000 people are living in this camp, many of them children, in inhumane conditions.”
With a number of shipments of personal protective equipment (PPE) for health workers having turned out to defective or inadequate, the UK's intelligence agencies are now vetting companies bidding for the contracts, according to a report in The Telegraph. The paper cites evidence given to parliament's Public Account Committee by Alex Chisholm, permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office, who said that company names "are now being run through intelligence databases to guard against fraudsters." The government has been accused of cronyism on numerous occasions, with contracts being awarded to companies with no relevant experience in supplying PPE - and in some cases with no apparent experience of anything, having been set up just days or weeks before receiving government funds.
Press release from the End Child Imprisonment campaign, published on 10 December 2020.
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