ECRE

Those attending the conference today will say at some point that the reason they combat smugglers is because they don’t want people to die on their way to Europe. But the real question is: what are they providing instead for people seeking protection?

#SafeRoutesNOW!

📍Smugglers will keep finding new routes as long as there is a demand.
📍No one should have to risk their life or pay a fortune simply to claim their right to safety and dignity.
📍Making safe and legal routes available is the only sustainable way to combat smuggling networks.

📍Smugglers don’t emerge in isolation. They exist cos safe & legal routes to protection are limited.
📍When people fleeing war, persecution, or hardship have no safe path, they are forced to turn to those who profit from their desperation, no matter the financial, emotional and physical consequences.

This is not the first time, and it won’t be the last, that EU officials and various stakeholders gather to discuss ways to combat migrant smuggling.

But what they continue to miss is the reason why migrant smuggling exists👇

🧵Today, in Brussels, more than 80 delegations from EU agencies, partner countries and international organisations are gathering to coordinate and deepen cooperation in the fight against migrant smuggling.

After the Greek Coast Guard found 17 bodies off Crete, a body of a 12-year-old child was found after he was struck by a boat propeller while reaching the Greek island of Samos.

#SafeRoutesNow #PeopleNotMigrants

Read this week's #ECREPressReview

Here: shorturl.at/KEQ7X

📣People aren’t dying at Europe’s borders by accident; they’re dying because the system is built to prioritise deterrence over protection. When safe and legal routes are blocked, death becomes the only route left.

#SafeRoutesNow!

We love seeing such powerful alliances 👏

It’s sad and outrageous that in 2025, we still have to remind those in power of what should have been a given long ago.

🔊But now, more than ever, we have to say it. And keep saying it, until practice matches the promise: Human rights know no borders, no migration status, no ethnicity, no papers.

▪️A focus on deterrence over inclusion and solidarity
▪️Legitimisation of detention
▪️Talks about establishing "return hubs"
▪️Designing unsafe countries as "safe"
▪️Co-operation with countries involved in crimes against humanity and abuses of rights

This contradiction is clearer than ever in Europe’s migration and asylum policies, where we keep seeing:
▪️ Pushbacks at borders
▪️No safe routes for people seeking asylum
▪️The dangerous expansion of the “safe country” concept
▪️Policies obsessed with "low return rate" instead of protection

❌Yet, human rights are unfortunately often reduced to mere rhetoric. They are increasingly used to mask, rather than prevent, the very violations they were meant to condemn.

It is indeed an important day. It is the very day the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

That Declaration promised that all people are born free and equal in dignity and rights, no matter their nationality, background, religion, gender or any other status.

🧵Tomorrow, 10 December, your feed will be full of officials, institutions, and agencies celebrating #HumanRightsDay...

... The same voices that have just backed the latest “reform” of asylum and migration policies, making them even more inhumane and unjust.

Guinea offers new migration route for weary, young west Africans CONAKRY: With a determined look on her weathered face, Safiatou Bah has made up her mind: she will leave her young children behind and migrate to Europe on a new and perilous ocean route from Guinea. ...

As safe and legal pathways remain out of reach, people seeking a better life continue to seek new routes - often more expensive and dangerous.

"The biggest European migration and asylum system reform", as described by the EU Migration Commissioner, gives MS the power to deport, detain, and raid the homes of people based on their migration status

This erosion of rights, packaged as a ‘reform,’ comes just days before #HumanRightsDay.

Meanwhile, EU ambassador and the commander of Irini in Benghazi met with Khalifa Haftar

According to IOM Libya, 478 people were intercepted and returned to Libya in the first week of December.

📣Let us remind you that people returned to Libya are not only prevented from seeking asylum, but also forced back to horrific conditions, including detention, forced labour & sexual violence.

@asgiit.bsky.social
@caritaseuropa.bsky.social
@cearefugio.bsky.social
@community-rights.bsky.social
@drcngo.bsky.social
@diakonie.de
@vluchtelingwerk.bsky.social
@pakolaisneuvonta.bsky.social
@forumrefugies.bsky.social
@franceterreasile.bsky.social
@gcrefugees.bsky.social

@icmc.bsky.social
@eu.rescue.org
@jrseurope.bsky.social
@ocalenie.bsky.social
@oxfameu.bsky.social
@proasyl.de
@safepassageintl.bsky.social
@vluchtelingenwerk.bsky.social

📣Our message: Avoid an excessive and harmful focus on return rates as the sole indicator of effectiveness in return policies and instead develop an approach that centres the sustainability and rights compliance of return and emphasises protection, legal pathways and integration measures.'

Read the full joint statement, led by ECRE, here: ecre.org/joint-civil-...

The reached Council's deal acts as a severe deterioration of safeguards in the Returns Regulation. Why❓ It:
▪️Expands detention & entry ban scope and periods
▪️Imposes broad cooperation obligations on third-country nationals
▪️Enables return hubs
▪️Obsesses over return rate
▪️Focuses on punishment

The EU Council’s recent Returns Regulation deal goes against key demands from about 70 civil society organisations.

🔊The main demand: A rights-based approach focused on voluntary, dignified return, strict detention limits, and full compliance with EU and international law.

The deal builds on a March 2025 Commission proposal to boost low EU return rates.

It features:
👉Obligations for those who are staying without a residence
👉Enabling return hubs
👉Imposing a system of detention & entry ban
👉Mutual recognition of return decisions
👉European return order (ERO)

Council clinches deal on EU law about returns of illegally staying third-country nationals The Council reached its position on a regulation for a common European returns system.

🧵Today, the Council of the EU reached a deal on a new regulation establishing a common system for returns.

On France's coast, far-right British activists try to stop migrant crossings Since summer 2024, radical British groups have periodically traveled to the French shores of the English Channel, aiming to 'stop the boats' and protest what they describe as a migrant invasion.

Anti-migrant groups have been increasingly mobilising across EU borders, preventing people seeking safety from crossing. Ex: Poland-Germany, Netherlands-Germany, and now France-UK.

🔎These acts aren't a coincidence. They’re a direct result of a mainstream narrative that treats migration as a threat.

Migration to Europe: Single women face sexual violence Esther says she faced sexual violence on her journey to Europe after fleeing abuse in Nigeria.

The world marked International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women a few days ago.

🆘But single women seeking protection risk rape and exploitation on their journeys to Europe.

🔎On "safe countries", ECRE published a policy paper on the proposed EU list of safe countries of origin (SCO), the “frontloading” of safety designations in asylum procedures, the use of accelerated and border procedures and the revised definition of “safe third countries:

Here: shorturl.at/zDJdE