Ai Weiwei showing his installation with of a 70 meter long rubber boat with 280 larger-than-life figures of refugees hanging from the ceiling of the National Gallery in Prague, Czech Republic, 16 March 2017. Michael Heitmann/Press Association. All rights reserved. The CEE countries have in the past few years
taken a very strong stance against refugees. They are not willing to host
refugees – whether this involves the claim that these are people from different
cultures or have different religions, or blaming the inadequate infrastructure
and the fact that people do not want to come to these countries. There is
a rise in negative public attitudes towards Muslims and other foreigners.

For instance: the Czech Republic
systematically abuses migrants’ rights as part of a deterrent strategy. The
number of detained migrants rose from a few hundred in 2013 to 8,500 in
2015. The Bulgarian police continues to “apprehend people who arrive,
to fingerprint and detain them for deportation”. And there are an increasing number of reports of violent push-backs and
collective expulsions from Bulgaria. Hungary has just passed a law that allows
for automatic detention for all asylum seekers. Hungary
has just passed a law that allows for automatic detention for all asylum seekers.

There is a direct connection between the
stance taken towards migration and refugees and the rule of law crises
in CEE countries, as migration flows have been used by rightwing populists to
fuel and justify skepticism about human rights, the rule of law, and the EU
legal order, and to block implementation of EU solidarity measures such as
relocation.

The EU has been unwilling or unable to
adequately defend its values (and sometimes laws) as regards migrants
specifically, as well as the rule of law generally, and needs to take stronger
positions on both. On numerous occasions the Commission should have
started infringement proceedings and we are not seeing it happen. There is a
disconnect between law and practice whereby the EU is continually reforming the
Common European Asylum System (CEAS) but seems incapable of implementing it.

Member states show little willingness to
improve their asylum systems and uphold human rights. With the overall
dysfunctional Dublin Regulation, relocation and lack of resettlement places,
the EU member states seem to compete with each other over who will attract less
asylum seekers. With the overall dysfunctional
Dublin Regulation, relocation and lack of resettlement places, the EU member
states seem to compete with each other over who will attract less asylum
seekers.

Looking at the solidarity mechanism, priority
should be given to family re-unification, voluntary re-location and financial
solidarity. Relocation needs to be to places where reception conditions can
comply with human rights. The minimum that is needed is a correct
implementation of the existing legislation – such as the current Dublin rules:
first criteria should be family reunification – to send people forward to a
country where they have a family, not just backwards to a first country of
entry, as we are seeing today.

We should reflect on the work of
the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights
of Migrants and his critique of the EU as well as of individual EU member
states and his push for legal migration routes to Europe (Report from 2015). It
was one of the first times that the UN human rights mechanisms have addressed
the EU specifically. Francois Crepeau has said many times to the EU
countries that territorial sovereignty cannot be protected at the expense
of human rights. He has been calling for legal and safe routes for refugees (and economic
migrants).

The Geneva refugee convention was enacted when
no visa regimes were in place. It is based on a presumption that a person
fleeing persecution can enter another country to seek protection. However if
you look at the case of Syrians today, the only country that issues
humanitarian visas to some of them is Brazil and only Sudan has no visa
requirement for Syrians. Other than these, there is no legal way for Syrians to
leave the country and seek protection. Even when crossing the border to Turkey,
people are now being pushed back as a result of the EU-Turkey deal.

Therefore the current system, where refugees
can get protection in Europe only when they reach European soil – and there is
no legal and safe way to actually do so – pushes people into irregular ways to
reach Europe, where their life and dignity are threatened. This fosters the
smuggling and even trafficking of human beings.

People should come to Europe through regular
channels rather than spend all their money on smugglers and risk their lives in
this way. What solidarity responses do we need? Safe and legal channels: family
reunification visas, resettlement, humanitarian visa, etc. People should come to Europe through regular channels
rather than spend all their money on smugglers and risk their lives in this
way.

Refugees and migrants
lack access to political rights in Europe, which is one of the major reasons
why they can be used as scapegoats by governments. This absence is the main
reason for the lack of political will to pay any attention to their rights.
Migrants and refugees should have the right to vote in local elections at
least. Otherwise populist politicians can repeat all over again the same
arguments and they will have find little opposing argument.

Francois
Crepeau has also said that rights have never been fought for better than by people
themselves, as in the case of those who fought for the rights of women or
LGBTI. We should try to find ways to empower migrants to be able to fight for
their rights.

The 2017
CEPS Ideas Lab – a key annual event on EU policy organised by the
Brussels-based think tank, the Centre for European Policy Studies – asked how
such core EU challenges as Rights & Security can be implemented with
respect for the EU rule of law and fundamental rights. Cooperating with
openDemocracy, we bring the resulting debates to this dedicated page.