Reacting to the European Parliament’s vote to ratify changes to EU asylum rules that undermine the foundation of refugee protection, Olivia Sundberg Diez, the EU Advocate on Migration and Asylum at Amnesty International, said:
“It’s a very dark day for human rights in the EU. This attack on the right to asylum is taking place while a vast array of punitive deportation measures remain under negotiation. With this vote the European Parliament is capitulating to a decades-long campaign to strip away human rights, starting with the rights of asylum seekers, refugees and migrants. This troublesome political shift strikes at the core of the EU’s foundational principles.
“Today’s vote will mean that people seeking asylum in the EU could have their applications rejected without review, and be sent to countries to which they have no connection and where they have never even set foot. These measures mark an abdication of the EU’s commitment to refugee protection and pave the way for EU member states to broker agreements with third countries for the offshore processing of asylum claims.
“Today’s deal also introduces an EU-wide list of countries of origin that are considered ‘safe’, placing a burden on people seeking asylum to prove otherwise. This undermines the individual assessment of protection claims, and raises yet another hurdle in the legal maze that will undoubtedly see people at risk denied the protection they need.”
Background
On 10 February, the European Parliament voted in favour of rules amending the ‘safe third country’ concept in the EU Asylum Procedures Regulation, as well as introducing an EU-wide ‘safe countries of origin’ list. The rules will make it easier for member states to apply the ‘safe third country’ concept to reject asylum applications as inadmissible, without an examination of their merits, and to forcibly transfer people seeking safety to countries to which they have no connection, or that they may have only transited through. They also remove the suspensive effect of appeals in these cases, meaning that people could be deported while appeals are pending.
The list of safe countries of origin includes Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, Kosovo, India, Morocco and Tunisia, as well as EU accession candidate countries (with exceptions). Nationals from these countries will be presumed not to be in need of protection and will be channelled through an accelerated asylum procedure, detracting from an individualised assessment of their claims.
