»Die Verteidigung der 'Festung Europa' kostet Menschenleben«

Introduction

Every year thousands of migrants and refugees try to reach Europe. Some are driven by the need to escape grinding poverty; others are seeking refuge from violence and persecution. Their journey is fraught with danger. At least 23,000 people are estimated to have lost their lives trying to reach Europe since 2000. And those who make it to the borders of the European Union (EU) find that safety remains beyond their grasp.

The EU and its member states have constructed an increasingly impenetrable fortress to keep irregular migrants out – irrespective of their motives, regardless of the desperate measures that many are prepared to take to reach its shores. In order to “defend” its borders, the EU has funded sophisticated surveillance systems, given financial support to member states at its external borders, such as Bulgaria and Greece, to fortify their borders and created an agency to coordinate a Europe-wide team of border guards to patrol EU frontiers.

Individual member states themselves are taking drastic measures to stop irregular arrivals. Migrants and refugees are being expelled unlawfully from Bulgaria, Greece and Spain, without access to asylum procedures and often in ways that put them at grave risk. They are ill-treated by border guards and coastguards. In addition, some EU countries are using the threat of lengthy detention as a deterrent for those thinking about coming to Europe.

The measures employed by the EU do not stop at its actual borders but extend deep into neighbouring countries.

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The EU and member states have sought to create a buffer zone by entering into cooperation arrangements with neighbouring countries that help them block irregular migration towards Europe. They have funded reception and detention centres for migrants and refugees in countries where there are serious concerns about access to asylum procedures in detention, such as Turkey and Ukraine. They have put in place readmission agreements with countries of origin and transit, allowing those who manage to arrive in Europe to be sent back more easily.

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These measures, whose effectiveness in stopping irregular migration to Europe is at best questionable, are causing human suffering and costing human lives.8 With safer routes into the EU being closed off by fences, increased surveillance and the deployment of more and more security forces, people are being forced to take ever more dangerous routes, sometimes with tragic consequences. Women, men and children are drowning at sea or suffocating in trucks. They face violence at EU’s borders and are denied their right to seek asylum. Those seeking to enter the EU end up trapped in countries such as Libya, Morocco, Ukraine and Turkey, where their rights are at risk. In some of these countries they suffer destitution without access to social and economic rights, in some they face violence and even torture.9

It is the sum total of these policies and practices, within, at and outside the EU’s borders, that this report refers to as “Fortress Europe”. The construction of this fortress has ostensibly been designed to prevent irregular economic migration. Indeed, national authorities and EU institutions frequently pay lip service to the right to seek asylum and Europe’s obligation – both legal and moral - to provide it. The reality, however, is that almost half of those irregularly entering Europe are fleeing conflict and persecution in countries like Syria, Eritrea, Afghanistan and Somalia, and the EU is no more porous for them than it is for economic migrants. All are exposed to unacceptable risks to their lives and rights as a result of the EU’s relentless drive to reduce the overall number of arriving migrants.

It should not be assumed that the responsibility for the construction of Fortress Europe and the abuses at the EU’s borders lies solely, or even primarily, with the countries along the EU’s southern and eastern edges. These are, for the most part, countries of transit as much as Morocco, Libya and Turkey. The forbidden lands that most are trying to reach are the countries of the North, and it is these, as much as those in the South, that are pushing the EU to seal its borders, and bending EU institutions to this agenda. It is these that are designing and paying for Fortress Europe.

This report describes some of the key elements of the EU’s migration policy and how this policy plays out at the EU’s southeastern border, where Bulgaria and Greece meet Turkey, one of the main routes used by Syrian refugees seeking safety in the EU. The report ends with recommendations calling on the EU and members states to review their migration policy urgently in order to shift its primary focus from protecting borders to protecting people. 

Den vollständigen Bericht finden Sie hier (pdf).