| Author (Person) | Cronin, David |
|---|---|
| Series Title | European Voice |
| Series Details | Vol.12, No.12, 30.3.06 |
| Publication Date | 30/03/2006 |
| Content Type | News |
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Date: 30/03/06 Asylum-seekers bound for the EU frequently have to undertake perilous journeys; deaths caused by drowning or suffocation during transit illustrate how voyages of hope can sometimes end in disaster. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) recommends that those asylum-seekers who make it to the Union's frontiers should only be detained under exceptional circumstances such as if a threat to public security has been identified. But research conducted by the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) has demonstrated how every EU country detains asylum-seekers. The maximum permitted lengths of detention vary from 72 hours in Denmark to an indefinite period of time in the UK and the Netherlands, with Germany, Malta and Latvia allowing detention for 18 months or longer. Conditions of detention are often harsh, with inadequate medical care noted in ten countries and cases of torture or ill-treatment in the Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Germany, Italy, Malta and Britain. And while there are no official data on the number of children asylum-seekers in detention, Save the Children has estimated that 2,000 are held each year in the UK alone. In theory, cases of detention should fall dramatically next year when a 2005 directive on minimum standards for granting and withdrawing refugee status should enter into force. It says that nobody should be held for the sole reason that he or she was seeking asylum. But Cornelia Buehrle from the JRS argues that "unfortunately, this provision is so general that it will be easy to circumvent". For example, there would be nothing to stop member states from deciding that it was necessary to hold asylum-seekers for medical screening, she said. A separate proposal wending its way through the EU institutions would also have implications for the detention of those whose applications for asylum have been rejected. In September last year, the European Commission issued a draft directive on procedures to be followed in expelling people in that category. This provides for "temporary custody" in cases where it was believed there were "serious grounds to believe" that someone awaiting deportation would abscond and where "less coercive measures" such as requirements to report regularly to the police or depositing a cash guarantee were deemed insufficient. Temporary custody orders would have to be reviewed by judicial authorities once a month but they would have the power to extend them for up to six months. A Commission official said that "an in-depth scrutiny" of the proposal had been carried out to ensure that it would fully comply with fundamental rights laid down by EU and international law. An alliance of faith-based organisations including the Churches' Commission for Migrants in Europe, the International Catholic Migration Commission and the Quaker Council for European Affairs disagrees. It complains that member states would be given too much leeway to decide what constituted a "risk of absconding" and raises concerns that the proposal "may lead in practice to a free and automatic use of detention by nation- al authorities". "Six months as a maximum duration of detention is too long for an administrative measure which applies to persons who are not criminals," it adds. Austria's EU presidency has placed the proposal on the agenda of a June meeting of the justice and interior ministers. Diederik Kramers, Brussels spokesman for UNHCR, said that "countries that have detention of less than six months shouldn't see this as an excuse to extend to six months". "In general, the rules on migration detention [in EU states] are very vague," he added. "It is very easy for authorities to keep people, without having to go through the motions for normal prison detention in crime cases. The criteria are less clear about who can be detained, why they are detained, and for how long." Earlier this month, the European Council on Refugees and Exile (ECRE), a network of non-governmental organisations, produced an analysis of the 2003 Dublin II regulation, which states that a claim to be granted asylum in the Union may only be processed by one of its member states. ECRE found that several EU countries - Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, Austria, the Netherlands, Britain and Luxembourg - have increasingly resorted to detention prior to transferring asylum-seekers to the member state handling their application. Recommending that non-custodial measures like reporting requirements should always be considered as alternatives, the report says that since "asylum-seekers may have already suffered imprisonment and torture in the country from which they have fled", the consequences of detention amount to "inhuman and degrading treatment". Article takes a look at the practice of detention of asylum-seekers in teh EU's Member States and proposed and adopted EU legislation in the field. |
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| Subject Categories | Justice and Home Affairs |
| Countries / Regions | Europe |
