Near Idomeni, thousands of mainly Iraqi and Syrian refugees and migrants were stranded by a Balkan border blockade, March 2016. NurPhoto/Press Association. All rights reserved. European institutions are currently discussing the proposals published by the European Commission last year on how to deal with asylum seekers in Europe. They seem, however to be wilfully ignoring the fact that the Commission’s design for a new Common European Asylum System (CEAS) is already failing in the two countries where their vision is being piloted, notably Italy and Greece.
Amnesty International has documented the human rights violations which these egregious failings lead to in two recent reports: Hotspot Italy - how EU’s flagship approach leads to violations of refugee and migrant rights, and Greece: A Blueprint for despair – the human rights impact of the EU-Turkey deal.
Both the hotspot approach and the EU-Turkey deal were a response to the unprecedented peak in the number of arrivals to Europe’s southern countries in the course of 2015. While the deal’s main objective was to bring down the number of migrants and refugees arriving in Greece, the hotspot approach’s primary aim was to stop irregular onward movements of refugees and migrants within the EU’s Schengen area. That was to be achieved by enforcing the much discredited Dublin rules and ensuring comprehensive registration and fingerprinting by Italy and Greece of all those arriving to their shores. This was meant to ensure the possibility of them being returned to Italy – and eventually also to Greece, once conditions there allow for the reinstatement of Dublin transfers.
