RIGHTS-EUROPE: Seeking Refuge Could Become Criminal

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

David Cronin

BRUSSELS, Feb 1 2008 (IPS) - Plans by the European Union to allow police to study data on asylum-seekers have run into difficulty amid concerns that the move could result in victims of persecution being treated as criminal suspects.

During 2007, most of the EU’s 27 governments agreed that police and law enforcement authorities should have access to Eurodac, a database storing the fingerprints of asylum applicants. A paper discussed by the Union’s diplomats recommended that this should be undertaken “in order to fully achieve the aim of improving security and enhancing the fight against terrorism.”

Though the EU’s executive, the European Commission, was urged to bring forward a formal proposal on this matter as soon as possible, its officials have cast doubt on whether acceding to this request would be desirable.

Angela Martini, head of a Commission department handling asylum issues, admitted Jan. 31 that there are “some hesitations” among her colleagues on the idea.

Speaking to members of the European Parliament (MEPs), she said that a variety of issues are being examined before any proposal will be made. These relate to data protection, the possible “stigmatisation of asylum-seekers” and the value of giving police access to this data, she added.

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has suggested that the measure under discussion has the potential to foment hostility towards asylum-seekers.

“This could be a dangerous development at a time when xenophobia and racism are on the rise in some (EU) member states,” UNHCR spokesman Gilles Van Moortel told IPS.

Under rules approved by EU governments in 2000, fingerprints of each asylum-seeker older than 14 who enters the Union are taken and then transmitted for storage on a database located in Brussels.

The database, which is managed by the European Commission, is used to establish if someone who applies for asylum in one EU country has already submitted a previous application in another.

The UNHCR believes that opening up the database to the police would run counter to at least the spirit of the 1951 Refugee Convention, the cornerstone of international law on asylum. The convention stipulates that nobody should be returned to a country where they fear persecution.

If police within the EU are able to access Eurodac, there is a risk they could pass it on to their counterparts in an asylum-seekers’ home country, Van Moortel noted. “This could place the safety of asylum-seekers at risk.”

Van Moortel suggested that the measure being contemplated could also have adverse health consequences. Asylum-seekers, he noted, include people who have had their rights abused by police in their home countries. As a result, they could be psychologically damaged if they are subsequently treated as suspected criminals in a country where they seek protection.

“We have to remember that applying for protection is not and never will be a crime,” said Bjarte Vandvik, secretary-general of the European Council on Refugees and Exile.

Even though many of the perpetrators of the worst recent atrocities in western Europe – such as the 2005 London bombings – were born in the EU, some politicians have created the impression that asylum-seekers pose a threat.

“The non-criminal, internationally recognised and perfectly understandable act of applying for asylum is more and more seen in connection with security threats in Europe,” Vandvik said. “But there is very little evidence to link these things.”

British Liberal MEP Sarah Ludford said she had received assurances from Franco Frattini, the European commissioner for justice, that police officers would only be able to access Eurodac “in well-defined cases, where there is an overriding security concern.”

She has declined, however, to accept this assurance at face value.

“There are problems with Eurodac and there will be a lot more when it is used for policing purposes – not least the danger of stigmatising asylum-seekers as criminals,” she added.

In a report issued in June last year, the Commission pinpointed some weaknesses in the system’s operation.

Data is supposed to be erased, for example, in cases where an asylum-seeker obtains citizenship of an EU state. “Unfortunately, such deletion is not done routinely, namely because the member state that introduced the data is not aware of the change of status,” the report said.

Despite allegations by far-right organisations that Europe is being ‘swamped’ by foreigners, the Commission’s report also indicated that asylum applications are falling.

In 2003, the fingerprints of nearly 240,000 asylum seekers were taken. But this figure declined to 187,000 in 2005, despite the fact that membership of the Union had grown from 15 to 25 countries that year.