To ease the migration problem, the European Union is considering deporting asylum seekers to third countries they have never lived in or passed through — an idea human rights groups warn could undermine migrants’ rights and increase the risk of arbitrary detention.
According to current EU law, responsible authorities in member states must prove a connection between asylum seekers and the third countries to which they seek to deport them to. However, by overhauling the asylum system, member states will be able to reject asylum claims and declare them inadmissible if the asylum seeker could receive “effective protection” in a third country deemed “safe” by the bloc, even if the asylum seeker has no connection to any degree to that country, according to the proposal.
The new law would also prohibit asylum seekers whose asylum requests were rejected from remaining in EU territory during the appeal process. With this new structure the EU is looking to “accelerate asylum processes and reduce pressure on asylum systems,” the document said.
“EU countries have been under significant migratory pressure for the past decade. With the Pact on Migration and Asylum, the Commission, Member States and the European Parliament have agreed on a common system to better manage this pressure,” the EU Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration Magnus Brunner said.
Human rights groups have accused the EU of attempting to shirk its responsibility to protect refugees by using this new law to “[shift] them to countries with fewer resources and less capacity to offer lasting protection.”
“Sending people to countries to which they have no connection, no support and no prospects… is not only chaotic and arbitrary, but also devastating on a human level,” said Olivia Sundberg Diez, Amnesty International’s EU Advocate on Migration and Asylum.
The EU’s criteria for "safe third countries" include being able to protect asylum seekers against refoulement and posing no risk of “serious harm or threats to life or liberty due to race, religion, nationality, social group, or political opinion” as well as allowing asylum seekers to request and receive effective protection, the organization said.
Paradoxically, the list of designated "safe countries" includes several with a long record of human rights violations, such as Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt. Last April, the EU declared the three countries, along with Bangladesh, Colombia, India, and Kosovo, safe countries to which it could return rejected asylum seekers.
EuroMed Rights called on the EU to reconsider its designation of the three North African countries as “safe,” saying that labeling such countries with “well-documented rights abuses and limited protections for both their own citizens and migrants” as "safe" is “misleading — and dangerous.”
If approved by the European Parliament and the Council, the amended law will be included in the EU’s Pact on Migration and Asylum, which is set to enter into force in 2026.
This proposal is another example of the type of reforms that the EU is implementing in its migration and asylum policies. In March, the EU proposed a new common return system to address the gaps in enforcing return decisions for migrants who are not authorized to stay in the EU.
As the EU amends its migration and asylum policies, Amnesty International expressed concern that these changes "amount to an alarming attempt to externalize refugee protection and migration control far from Europe’s borders.”
