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.
Two discussion papers recently circulated by the German Presidency of the Council, on the future of legal migration to the EU and lessons learned for legal migration policy from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Belgium's deportation of an individual to Sudan violated the rights to an effective remedy and the prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment, the ECHR has ruled. The case concerns a deportation that took place in 2017, when the Belgian and Sudanese authorities were cooperating closely on forced removals.
Current rules are "perceived to be insufficient by both Europol and the OSPs [online service providers]."
The German Presidency of the Council is pressing ahead with its efforts to undermine encryption in the name of law enforcement. Close cooperation with industry is the preferred means, but "there should be no single prescribed technical solution to provide access to the encrypted data." However, as experts have long pointed out, there is no way to give law enforcement agencies routine access to encrypted data without fundamentally undermining the security of all users of a given service or technology.
Four people - two adults and two children - have died whilst attempting to cross the Channel in a small boat, which sank off the coast of France. There are calls for changes to the UK's asylum system and border control measures to prevent the same thing happening again in the future. This incident follows the drowning of a teenager earlier this year.
EU border agency Frontex has signed a €15,000 contract with a private security company based in Northern Ireland for the provision of "human intelligence training".
A brief Europol report looks at the changing landscape of human trafficking in light of new technologies, and sets out some of the new law enforcement activities and powers it perceives as required to deal with the issue.
The UNHCR has issued a paper setting out certain "practical considerations for fair and fast border procedures and solidarity". A proposal for procedures to swiftly assess asylum claims whilst individuals are detained in facilities at the EU's border is a key feature of the EU's new Pact on Migration and Asylum.
On 5 October the Italian council of ministers adopted a decree that reverses a number of policies introduced by former interior minister Matteo Salvini. Residency permits will once again be available on humanitarian grounds, and asylum-seekers will have the right to access services offered through the country's reception system. However, the government has maintained fines for the crews of ships carrying out search and rescue activities, merely reducing the penalty from one million to €50,000. Parliamentary oversight may see changes to the new rules.
EU border agency Frontex has been accused of direct involvement in at least two pushback operations in the Aegean Sea, and of being in close proximity to four others, following an investigation by a number of media outlets.
Juraj Sajfert argues that a recent CJEU decision on national bulk data retention and collection practices is "a complex victory for the law enforcement community and a major step back in the Court’s data retention jurisprudence."
Large drones are heading to the skies above the Mediterranean, with both Italy and EU border agency Frontex recently agreeing multi-million euro contracts with private companies. The drones will be used for border surveillance, and in particular are like to assist with pull-backs to North Arican states.
The UK's second-largest police force is to stop prosecuting people caught with drugs intended for personal use, provided that they agree to participate in a drug education or treatment scheme.
Bulgaria is preventing the signature of an agreement allowing the deployment of Frontex teams in North Macedonia because "Bulgaria doesn’t recognise the language of North Macedonia as “Macedonian”, as the authorities in Skopje call it. Bulgarian scientists consider it as a dialect of Bulgarian."
Croatia and the USA have signed an agreement on the transfer of Passenger Name Record (PNR) data, taken from air passengers during the booking process, as part of Croatia's ongoing attempts to achieve a visa waiver for its citizens.
Christos Pappas, the former deputy leader of Golden Dawn, has gone on the run to evade a 13-year prison sentence handed down against him. He is one of six former leaders of the far-right party sentenced to 13 years in prison; others have received lesser or suspended sentences. Thirty-eight of the 50 people convicted face prison.
The annual report on deaths during or following police contact has been published by the Independent Office for Police Conduct.
HumanRights360 presents its latest report on its work at the border of Evros, for the period May-September 2020.
The European Court of Human Rights has found that the German authorities breached Article 3 (inhuman and degrading treatment) and Article 13 (right to an effective remedy) of the European Convention on Human Rights through a policy of random strip searches on prisoners, and a failure to provide legal aid for a prisoner to bring official liability proceedings when the domestic courts found the practice unlawful.
A new report by the migrants' rights organisation Movement for Justice, based on interviews with 20 people held in the Yarl's Wood detention centre after arriving in the UK by crossing the Channel, says that people are not being provided with legal advice until the very last minute - and that the government's claims that "lefty lawyers" are using last-minute appeals to frustrate deportations are in fact the only option many people have to prevent unlawful removal from the UK.
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