LONDON: Asylum-seekers are being forcibly expelled at the borders of some EU countries, Europe’s most senior human rights official has warned.
The Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, Michael O’Flaherty, sounded the alarm over the treatment of asylum-seekers in comments to The Guardian. The “securitization response” encouraged by populists in Europe is “going too far,” he said.
Poland, Greece and Latvia are among the countries that have pushed back asylum-seekers.
O’Flaherty testified last month before the grand chamber of the European Court of Human Rights. The court cases were brought by asylum-seekers against Poland and Latvia.
The case against the former involved 31 Afghans alleging that Polish border guards pushed them back to Belarus in 2021, giving them no chance to claim asylum.
The second case saw 26 Iraqi Kurds allege that they were expelled to Belarus from Latvia the same year.
“The willingness to shut down any possibility of asylum is a violation of law; the willingness to return people across a border at risk of persecution is a violation of international law,” O’Flaherty said.
“And it’s not necessary, because the numbers that are being intercepted at the fences are modest.”
Frontex, the EU’s border agency, reported about 17,000 irregular crossings over the bloc’s eastern land border last year.
Lawmakers in Poland are proposing plans to temporarily suspend the right to asylum. Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said migration is a question of “the survival of our Western civilization.”
Asked about the alleged pushbacks from Poland, O’Flaherty said he was “not in a position to describe a universal practice,” but was “confident that there have been sufficient incidents to be a cause of great concern.”
There is also “compelling evidence” of expulsions on the Greek border with Turkiye, O’Flaherty added.
He visited Greece in February to discuss the Adriana shipwreck with officials. The June 2023 disaster led to more than 700 migrants drowning in the Mediterranean Sea, with NGOs accusing Greek authorities of negligence.
O’Flaherty also addressed growing calls within Europe to “off-shore” asylum processing, including an Italian agreement with Albania and Britain’s axed Rwanda plan.
He said any external centers have to guarantee certain human rights: the right to claim asylum and appeal a decision; “appropriate reception conditions”; no detention of children; and ensuring asylum-seekers would not be returned to a country where they risk persecution.
The current period is the “most challenging time for the protection of human rights” he has seen in his career, O’Flaherty told The Guardian. The Irish national began working with the UN in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1993.
Since 2024, centrist politicians have been willing to suspend or ignore human rights obligations, particularly concerning asylum rights, he said.
“Centrist politicians are saying things that would have been unacceptable a very short time ago, and that worries me, because if I can mangle a quotation from the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, ‘when the centre cannot hold, things fall apart,’” O’Flaherty added.
