Otsing

The arrival of refugees and irregular migrants in the EU in unprecedented numbers in 2015 exposed a number of deficiencies in the EU's external border, asylum and migration policy, and sparked EU action through various legal and policy instruments. Today, even though the EU has been relatively successful in securing its external borders, curbing irregular migrant arrivals and increasing cooperation with third countries, Member States are still reluctant to show solidarity and do more to share responsibility ...

In 2016, with unprecedented numbers of irregular migrants and asylum seekers arriving in the EU, the European Commission proposed a package of reforms for the common European asylum system (CEAS). In June 2018, a broad provisional agreement was reached between the European Parliament and the presidency of the Council of the EU on several reform proposals. However, the agreement did not get the necessary support from the Member States. The reform stalled owing to persistent disagreements among the ...

This study, commissioned by the European Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the LIBE Committee, provides an overview of EU funding for asylum and migration in third countries. It considers funding both from the Justice and Home Affairs funds and the external action funds, covering the previous Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) (2014-2020) and the current MFF (2021-2027) funding periods. The study seeks to identify good practice in ...

In 2021, Aleksandr Lukashenko's Belarusian regime began actively attracting migrants from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and other countries, before encouraging and even forcing them to cross the borders into the European Union. This put pressure on the neighbouring countries of Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, and was the Belarusian regime's response to EU sanctions imposed following the regime's rigging of elections in 2020 and violent repression of civil society in 2021. In December 2021, the European ...

From the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, and up to mid-April 2020, EU Member States were facing an extraordinary situation that led to the declaration of a health emergency. EU governments gradually took urgent measures to contain the spread of the virus, such as re introduction of border controls in the Schengen area, implementation of temporary travel restrictions, and introduction of sanitary measures. These had vast impact on both mobility and migration. Multiple measures also ...

In December 2000, in a resolution to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the UN General Assembly designated 20 June as World Refugee Day. According to the UN, at the end of 2020 there were 82.4 million forcibly displaced people in the world; nearly 26.4 million of them were refugees and around half of those were under 18 years old. In 2022, following Russia's war on Ukraine, Europe is facing a large new wave of refugees in search of peace and ...

The Conference on the Future of Europe was designed to give citizens a say about their vision for the EU, by means of a multilingual digital platform and citizens' panels. The panels are transnational forums, gathering citizens from the EU Member States to discuss their ideas for the future of the Union and make recommendations on how the EU could be improved. The resulting proposals are diverse and constructive. The suggestions for the future range from adjustments of legislation in force to complete ...

The refugee and asylum policies of the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) are aligned with the human rights principles of the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. However, structural weaknesses in application processes and resettlement programmes have disrupted humanitarian processing, and left both EU and US systems battling massive backlogs in applications. The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated this situation, hampering the basic provision of international ...

Since the beginning of the migratory crisis in 2015, growing numbers of unaccompanied children have been seeking protection in Europe. With increased migratory pressure in Greece along the EU's external border with Turkey at the beginning of 2020, and following the Greek government's official request for support, the European Commission launched a relocation scheme to speed up relocation of unaccompanied minors from the Greek islands to other EU Member States. Human rights organisations had denounced ...

The number of migrant children has been rising globally since the turn of the century. According to estimates by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, in 2020, 35.5million children were living outside their country of birth, 11.5 million more than in 2000. Child migration takes many forms, from regular family reunification to forced and traumatic migration. This infographic focuses exclusively on forced and irregular movements of migrant children to the EU.