Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Global cities
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter
  • Membership

EU migration and asylum pact abandons compassion and human rights

Ludovic Voet 10th June 2021

Faced with escalating deaths in the Mediterranean, official Europe needs to relocate its moral conscience.

migration and asylum pact,asylum-seekers,refugees,migrant workers
Ludovic Voet

Summer approaches and a new humanitarian crisis is developing around Europe’s shores. In just the first four days of May, some 1,500 desperate people landed in Italy. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has warned of an increasing number of migrants attempting dangerous Mediterranean crossings—and of a growing death toll.

Since January, in bad weather and rough seas, hundreds of people have been rescued from the Atlantic while trying to make the perilous journey from Africa to the Canary Islands. Many more have drowned. Thousands, many of them children, attempted to enter the Spanish territory of Ceuta in May. Most were immediately returned to Morocco.

Illegal pushbacks

The European Union’s attempt to launch a new policy on migration and asylum is failing to meet this challenge. Most worryingly, it is threatening to undermine the human rights Europe claims to uphold, as well as perpetuating the abuse and exploitation of migrant labour. Eyewitness reports of illegal pushback operations by Greek border guards, forcing exhausted refugees back into unseaworthy boats, suggest that EU Frontex agents are complicit in this practice.

The European Commission published its European Pact on Migration and Asylum in September 2020. Recognising that ‘migration has been a constant feature of human history’, it purported to promised a ‘fresh start on migration in Europe’, adopting a ‘human and humane approach’. In reality, it reinforced policies of border control, detention and deportation—rather than compassion and respect for human rights—while at the same time revealing the disunity and lack of solidarity among member states.


Become part of our Community of Thought Leaders


Get fresh perspectives delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for our newsletter to receive thought-provoking opinion articles and expert analysis on the most pressing political, economic and social issues of our time. Join our community of engaged readers and be a part of the conversation.

Sign up here

The European Trade Union Confederation has condemned the pact. And it goes further in condemning member-state governments which seek to promote domestic political agendas by inciting hatred and xenophobia against vulnerable asylum-seekers, encouraging discrimination and nationalism and entrenching systemic racism.

Member-state obligations

The ETUC stands for the rights of all migrants, including asylum-seekers, refugees and undocumented migrants. All member states have an obligation to uphold the 1951 UN Geneva convention and its 1967 protocol, to provide legal protection to asylum-seekers—not to return them to countries where their lives or freedoms are threatened (the non-refoulement principle).

Yet the pact enables individual EU governments to breach a series of international conventions and to sponsor deportations as an alternative to allowing refugees to claim their individual right to asylum. This scheme shows anything but ‘solidarity’. Trade unions are calling for a united, humanitarian European asylum system, with an equitable distribution of people seeking refuge among member states.

The commission could have shown political leadership. It could have built a common, binding approach to migration and asylum, obliging all member states to respect international human-rights law. Instead, the strategy fell victim to anti-foreigner extremism and governments which refused to accept their shared responsibilities—leaving a minority of countries on the EU’s borders, such as Italy, still shouldering the burden.

Protecting workers

Immigrants want jobs and Europe needs safe and regular routes for labour migration, which prevent exploitation of migrant workers, and regularisation mechanisms for the millions of undocumented migrants who live and work in Europe. The pact makes no new proposals here, yet safe labour migration pathways are the only way to protect workers from abuse.

The vast majority of migrant workers are found in crucial but undervalued sectors, such as health and social care, transport, construction, agriculture and food, and domestic work. Migrant women in particular suffer low pay and insecurity and are vulnerable to sexual abuse and harassment.

Denying migrant workers their rights merely benefits unprincipled employers who use asylum-seekers and refugees, undocumented and other precarious workers as cheap labour, which in turn creates hostility and undermines conditions and pay for the whole workforce. Asylum-seekers should have access to employment in all member states and undocumented workers should have equal labour rights, with rapid action to regularise their status.

Trade union representation

The universal human rights of all workers should be respected, regardless of their employment status or nationality. The EU needs to ensure that everyone in the same workplace or sector enjoys fair pay and good working conditions, as well as job security and social protection. The best way to achieve this is through trade union representation.


Support Progressive Ideas: Become a Social Europe Member!


Support independent publishing and progressive ideas by becoming a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month. You can help us create more high-quality articles, podcasts and videos that challenge conventional thinking and foster a more informed and democratic society. Join us in our mission - your support makes all the difference!

Become a Social Europe Member

The ETUC insists that all migrant workers, including asylum-seekers, refugees and undocumented people, should have the right to decent employment and to join a trade union and benefit from collective bargaining. The commission has already acknowledged that trade unions play a key role in integrating migrants into the labour market.

The pact argues that the EU ‘needs to urgently catch up in the global race for talent’, in light of Europe’s ageing and shrinking population and shortage of specific skills. Yet the ETUC is concerned that the idea of a talent pool of third-country skilled workers would encourage a ‘brain drain’, which would further impoverish countries of origin. The EU needs to welcome migrants across a range of skills, sectors and occupations—not just the highly qualified.

Saving lives

In April, as a ‘key objective’ of the pact, the commission launched its Strategy on voluntary return and reintegration, demonstrating beyond doubt that deportation—rather than rights for refugees and inclusive integration—was the underlying philosophy. The commission’s policy will see more people deported from the EU in violation of fundamental rights.

Besides reports of involvement in pushback operations, the Frontex border agency is also mired in allegations of workplace harassment, mismanagement and financial irregularities. Yet the strategy proposes that a reinforced Frontex should support member states ‘in all stages of the voluntary return and reintegration process’. The ETUC deplores moves to strengthen the powers of Frontex over deportations, at the very moment when it is under investigation for taking part in illegal pushbacks. Instead, the commission should be working with the European Parliament to bring Frontex back under democratic control and ensure it complies with fundamental rights.

The continuing loss of life highlights the need for comprehensive search-and-rescue operations in the central Mediterranean. Yet far from establishing a co-ordinated mission, the pact threatens to prevent civil-society organisations from saving lives at sea, warning that the EU and member states will work to stop private vessels undermining ‘migration management’.

Lacking scrutiny

The European Parliament has itself voiced concerns about the pact, and criticised the commission and some member states for reaching bilateral border-control agreements with third countries which lack democratic scrutiny and threaten to breach migrants’ human rights. Calling—as has the ETUC—for more legal migration channels, the parliament points out that legal migration has barely figured in the EU’s policy in this area since 2015.

In late April, in just one incident off the Libyan coast, more than 100 people died, including a mother and her child. The International Organization for Migration and UNHCR have found that migrants and refugees in Libya continue to be subjected to arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, exploitation and violence, pushing them to make risky—sometimes fatal—sea crossings.

According to UNHCR, the number of arrivals in Italy by sea this year is already over 15,000, an increase of 177 per cent on the same period in 2020. Nearly 800 people have lost their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean—more than double the toll for the comparable interval last year.

Such figures are frightening. But official Europe needs to stop regarding migrants merely as statistics and start to recognise them as human beings—each with an individual story and aspirations, and the right to dignity and respect.

World Day of Decent Work,platform companies, ETUC
Ludovic Voet

Ludovic Voet was elected confederal secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation in 2019.

You are here: Home / Politics / EU migration and asylum pact abandons compassion and human rights

Most Popular Posts

Russia,information war Russia is winning the information warAiste Merfeldaite
Nanterre,police Nanterre and the suburbs: the lid comes offJoseph Downing
Russia,nuclear Russia’s dangerous nuclear consensusAna Palacio
Belarus,Lithuania A tale of two countries: Belarus and LithuaniaThorvaldur Gylfason and Eduard Hochreiter
retirement,Finland,ageing,pension,reform Late retirement: possible for many, not for allKati Kuitto

Most Recent Posts

Ukraine,fatigue Ukraine’s cause: momentum is diminishingStefan Wolff and Tetyana Malyarenko
Vienna,social housing Vienna social-housing model: celebrated but misusedGabu Heindl
social democracy,nation-state Social democracy versus the nativist rightJan Zielonka
chemical,European Union Which comes first—Big Toxics’ profits or health?Vicky Cann
Russia,journalists,Ukraine,target Ukraine: journalists in Russia’s sightsKelly Bjorkland and Simon Smith

Other Social Europe Publications

strategic autonomy Strategic autonomy
Bildschirmfoto 2023 05 08 um 21.36.25 scaled 1 RE No. 13: Failed Market Approaches to Long-Term Care
front cover Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship

ETUI advertisement

The future of remote work

The 12 chapters collected in this volume provide a multidisciplinary perspective on the impact and the future trajectories of remote work, from the nexus between the location from where work is performed and how it is performed to how remote locations may affect the way work is managed and organised, as well as the applicability of existing legislation. Additional questions concern remote work’s environmental and social impact and the rapidly changing nature of the relationship between work and life.


AVAILABLE HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound Talks: does Europe have the skills it needs for a changing economy?

In this episode of the Eurofound Talks podcast, Mary McCaughey speaks with Eurofound’s research manager, Tina Weber, its senior research manager, Gijs van Houten, and Giovanni Russo, senior expert at CEDEFOP (The European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training), about Europe’s skills challenges and what can be done to help workers and businesses adapt to future skills demands.

Listen where you get your podcasts, or for free, by clicking on the link below


LISTEN HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The summer issue of the Progressive Post magazine by FEPS is out!

The Special Coverage of this new edition is dedicated to the importance of biodiversity, not only as a good in itself but also for the very existence of humankind. We need a paradigm change in the mostly utilitarian relation humans have with nature.

In this issue, we also look at the hazards of unregulated artificial intelligence, explore the shortcomings of the EU's approach to migration and asylum management, and analyse the social downside of the EU's current ethnically-focused Roma policy.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

WSI European Collective Bargaining Report 2022 / 2023

With real wages falling by 4 per cent in 2022, workers in the European Union suffered an unprecedented loss in purchasing power. The reason for this was the rapid increase in consumer prices, behind which nominal wage growth fell significantly. Meanwhile, inflation is no longer driven by energy import prices, but by domestic factors. The increased profit margins of companies are a major reason for persistent inflation. In this difficult environment, trade unions are faced with the challenge of securing real wages—and companies have the responsibility of making their contribution to returning to the path of political stability by reducing excess profits.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube