{"id":741090,"date":"2026-02-04T05:33:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T05:33:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/741090\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T05:33:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T05:33:15","slug":"eu-caving-into-the-floodgates-of-anti-migrant-rhetoric-warns-human-rights-watch-euobserver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/741090\/","title":{"rendered":"EU \u2018caving into the floodgates of anti-migrant rhetoric\u2019 warns Human Rights Watch \u2013 EUobserver"},"content":{"rendered":"

The EU\u2019s obsession with migration has radically shaped its foreign policy, while at home its laws are eroding away the concept of asylum, says Human Rights Watch.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe EU is caving into the floodgates of anti-migrant rhetoric and inaction,\u201d says Iskra Kirova, an advocacy director at the NGO\u2019s office in Brussels.<\/p>\n

Speaking to EUobserver earlier this week, both Kirova and Human Rights Watch\u2019s EU director\u00a0Philippe Dam<\/a> warned of a Trump-led affront against the international rules based order.<\/p>\n

And when it comes to migration, Europe is seeking short-term objectives through transactional diplomacy that largely ignores human rights, says Dam \u2014 who highlighted the EU\u2019s contentious deal with Tunisia in 2023.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIs it in the EU\u2019s interest to have a more authoritarian leadership in Tunisia that might continue to use migration as a tool to create leverage on the EU, rather than the other way around?,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Allowing EU member states to transfer asylum seekers to countries they have never set foot in is also among the measures undermining core asylum rights, says Kirova.<\/p>\n

Offshore detention centres with murky jurisdiction<\/p>\n

And she warned against the EU\u2019s new deportation rules, which are still being negotiated within the European Parliament.<\/a> The bill allows EU states to set up deportation centres abroad.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are essentially offshore detention places,\u201d says Kirova.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know what the jurisdiction will be in those places. What is the applicable law? Who will be held accountable? How long can people be held there?,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Both their comments came ahead of Human Right Watch\u2019s annual report<\/a>, published on Wednesday (4 February) and broadly reflects civil society warnings on how rhetoric against migration is being normalised.<\/p>\n

What was once described by the European Commission as irregular migration is now rebranded as \u201cillegal migration\u201d, posing questions on whether people still have a right to enter the EU without any papers to claim asylum.<\/p>\n

A five-year political blueprint unveiled by the European Commission last week also signalled a tougher stance on preventing arrivals, using trade, development aid, visa policy, and political pressure to push third countries to curb migrant departures towards Europe.<\/p>\n

Henna Virkkunen, the vice-president of the European Commission, said then that the strategy ensured \u201cthat Europe\u2019s interests are safeguarded while staying true to our values in a changing geopolitical context on illegal migration.\u201d<\/p>\n

She called it a paradigm shift<\/a>, describing visas as an intersection of security, diplomacy and competitiveness.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about bringing illegal arrivals to a minimum, and [to] keep those numbers also there,\u201d said Magnus Brunner, the EU home affairs commissioner, noting the need to crack down on smugglers to save lives at sea.<\/p>\n

But the European Commission has for years been discussing how to bust the business model of smugglers to prevent the loss of life at sea, while at the same admitting that the EU-supported Libyan Coast Guard is itself infiltrated by criminal gangs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Similar strategies in the past made promises to curtail the business \u2014 but instead saw smugglers shift routes and tactics to evade authorities as profits soared.<\/p>\n

Its 2015 action plan against migrant smuggling, since updated, came with promises, so-called \u2018tool boxes\u2019, and long-term strategies and partnerships with countries outside the European Union.<\/p>\n

But given the lack of legal pathways towards Europe, experts in 2018 warned that smugglers<\/a> would instead be cashing in on the EU\u2019s strategy as people continued to die. And by 2023, the commission admitted that profits for smugglers had never been so high.<\/a><\/p>\n

Over 1,300 people died to trying to cross the central Mediterranean last year alone, according to the International Organization for Migration, an UN offshoot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The EU\u2019s obsession with migration has radically shaped its foreign policy, while at home its laws are eroding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":741091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[217083,2000,299,5187,1699,219419,219416,219413,219411,219414,219417,219412,219415,219418],"class_list":{"0":"post-741090","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-typedefinedterm","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-european","12":"tag-european-union","13":"tag-identifier23","14":"tag-identifier4283","15":"tag-identifier4343","16":"tag-nameasylum","17":"tag-namefar-right","18":"tag-namemigration","19":"tag-termcodeasylum","20":"tag-termcodefar-right","21":"tag-termcodemigration"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116010732927492907","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=741090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/741091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=741090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=741090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=741090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}