Government opts out of asylum directives

The government has opted out of two EU asylum directives, one of which would allow people to work after being in the UK for six months, claiming that they would hinder the asylum system.

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Source: Economic Times

Prime Minister sets out new immigration measures

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Greece asylum law and practice not compliant – CECHR

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Asylum deportation flights need rights monitors, EU says

The Guardian

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Zim’s democracy ‘insufficient’: EU ministers

IOL – A year into a power-sharing agreement that was supposed to put an end to President Robert Mugabe’s autocratic rule, Zimbabwe has made “insufficient” moves towards democracy, European Union foreign ministers said on Monday.

Last week the EU extended sanctions against the country for another year, renewing an arms embargo and a visa ban and asset freeze against Mugabe and his acolytes.

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EU Sanctions on Mugabe and Allies to Stay

ZimOnline – MEMBERS of the European Parliament (MEPs) have urged EU ministers meeting today to renew targeted sanctions on President Robert Mugabe and his henchmen to punish them for lack of progress in implementing the global political agreement (GPA).

The GPA is the power-sharing agreement signed in 2008 by Mugabe and former opposition leader and now Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai at the behest of southern African leaders and which gave birth to the Harare coalition government.

On the eve of the meeting by the EU Council of ministers to review the sanctions, Geoffrey Van Hordern, the MEP, who spearheads the European Parliament’s campaign for freedom and democratic change in Zimbabwe and, speaks for many MEPs outraged by Mugabe’s conduct, said the sanctions must be renewed because nothing much has changed in Zimbabwe despite last February’s inauguration of the unity government.

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3rd Country Removal Cases Reviewed

Free Movement – There were developments last week in the world of third country removal cases, and now seems like a good moment to review the current position.

The Dublin II Regulation (not its official title) enables EU states to return an asylum seeker to the country through which the asylum seeker first entered the EU. There are certain qualifications to that power, both legally and practically, but that is the nub of it. The Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants etc) Act 2004 established binding legal presumptions that removal to EU states cannot breach Article 3 ECHR.

In the case of TI v United Kingdom [2000] INLR 211 the European Court of Human Rights held that Dublin II did not absolve the United Kingdom from responsibility to ensure that a decision to expel an asylum seeker to another Member State did not expose that asylum seeker, at one remove, to treatment contrary to article 3 of the Convention. This is the concept of refoulement, to which there is no direct English language equivalent. My French is terrible, but I’m told its meaning is equivalent to ‘return, whether directly or indirectly’.

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MIGRANT CENTRE EVICTED BY FRENCH RIOT POLICE IN CALAIS

No Borders Brighton – Under instructioMigrantsn from the town authorities, the elite French CRS riot police today forcibly evicted the new Calais migrant centre – called Kronstadt Hangar – by smashing down the front doors, less than 24 hours after migrants and No Borders activists pushed through police lines to occupy the building, which has been legally rented by No Borders [1] and SoS Soutien aux Sans Papiers. [2]

Marie Chautemps said: “The Kronstadt Hangar was opened as a direct intervention into a winter of repression that the migrants in Calais have faced since their ‘jungle’ communities were destroyed in a cruel PR stunt, back in September.”

She continued that: “With the authorities blocking any attempts to create a place for migrants to shelter from constant police harassment or from the bitterly cold winter, the Kronstadt Hangar intervention was made in the name of common human respect as well as resistance to an increasingly fascist EU border policy.”

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Canning Seeks to Clarify Miliband’s Statement

The Zimbabwe Times – British ambassador to Zimbabwe, Mark Canning has clarified that the British government or the European Union reserved the right to lift targeted restrictive measures that President Mugabe’s party is strongly agitating against, and said Britain would make its own judgment without direction from anyone whether sanctions will be removed or reinforced.

 Zanu-PF stepped up the call for the removal of sanctions, which Mugabe claims have serious hurt Zimbabwe’s economy, riding on recent remarks by British foreign secretary David Miliband that the UK government would be guided by advice from Prime Minister Tsvangirai’s party on the issue.

 Simon Khaya Moyo, the new Zanu-PF national chairman, installed at the party’s fractious national congress held last December, said the MDC could no longer claim it had no influence over the issue and “must” now call for the removal of the sanctions.

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Guterres: European migration policies must not undermine refugee rights

(UNRIC) – The top United Nations refugee official has called on the European Union (EU) to ensure that migration control measures do not undermine fundamental rights of asylum-seekers and refugees.

High Commissioner António Guterres expressed concerns about the situation of people intercepted at sea in the Mediterranean and the responses of governments to this, including those of Italy, in a letter addressed to the Czech EU Presidency ahead of a meeting of the group’s Justice and Home Affairs Ministers later this week.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) voiced its concern last month after Italy sent over 200 people it rescued off Maltese waters back to Libya before properly assessing their possible protection needs.

Mr. Guterres called for EU support to Libya to improve the general conditions for asylum-seekers and refugees in the country, and appealed to EU Member States to admit those who appear to be in need of international protection.

“The High Commissioner is aware that some EU Member States, and particularly those located along the Mediterranean, face particular pressures from the arrival of asylum-seekers and refugees,” UNHCR spokesperson Ron Redmond told a news conference in Geneva today.

He said the agency is prepared to support responsibility-sharing mechanisms within the EU, including some relocation of people found in need of international protection, when reception and asylum systems in specific Member States are under strain. However, UNHCR’s activities cannot be a substitute for State responsibility.

“For that reason, UNHCR continues to call on EU countries to offer resettlement places for refugees who are currently without solutions in Libya and other countries where durable solutions are not available,” Mr. Redmond said.

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