The EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) has released a new report highlighting severe human rights violations at the EU’s land and sea borders. The report identifies systemic gaps and obstacles to investigating these violations, including failure to rescue and assist migrants in distress, maltreatment, and abuse.
The Pact on Migration and Asylum offers an opportunity to address these issues, and the report suggests specific steps to improve investigations into incidents at the borders. It reveals that many rights violations are not adequately investigated, with victims often not filing complaints due to mistrust of authorities, fear of retaliation, or lack of awareness of available procedures. Additionally, evidence is frequently scarce, investigations lack independence, are not thorough, take too long, and rarely involve victims. This makes it difficult for victims to seek redress in national courts, resulting in an increasing number of cases reaching the European Court of Human Rights. The court has criticised Member States for ineffective investigations into ill-treatment and deaths at borders.
The Screening Regulation, which is part of the Pact on Migration and Asylum, requires Member States to investigate allegations of violations of fundamental rights at their borders. The Pact also mandates Member States to create national implementation plans that include measures for swift and effective investigations.
FRA advocates for enhanced border monitoring and more robust accountability mechanisms to protect migrants and refugees better. FRA outlines several steps to facilitate effective investigations of rights violations at borders:
1. Human rights organisations should collect testimonies of rights violations, provide regular reports on the cases, and share relevant information with prosecutors.
2. National authorities should regularly publish statistics on the number and types of disciplinary and criminal investigations and their outcomes.
3. Authorities should assign cases to specialised prosecutorial departments to ensure impartial investigations.
4. Public prosecutor bodies should issue clear guidelines for investigating border-related abuses and collecting evidence. They should also identify and share information about patterns, deficiencies, and investigation best practices.
5. Authorities should involve lawyers or victims’ protection organisations to ensure victims are represented and supported throughout the proceedings.
6. Investigators should utilise surveillance footage, GPS data of law enforcement vehicles and personnel, and, when legally permissible, the positional mobile phone data of victims and witnesses to identify victims and reconstruct the sequence of events.
“There are too many allegations of human rights violations at the EU’s borders. Europe has a duty to treat everyone at the borders fairly, respectfully and in full compliance with human rights law. This calls for effective and rights-compliant border management practices, underpinned by robust and independent investigations into all rights abuse incidents,” emphasised FRA Director Sirpa Rautio.
This FRA report investigates disciplinary and criminal probes regarding human rights abuses against migrants and refugees at the EU’s external land and sea borders from 2020 to 2023. It includes instances of failing to assist individuals in distress, physical abuse, and other forms of inhumane treatment that endanger the lives and physical well-being of migrants. The report does not address administrative procedures related to asylum or deportation, nor does it cover failing to direct asylum-seekers to the appropriate procedures.
