30 October 2015 “It breaks my heart when I think that I had a chance to be successful and to rebuild a life, but I could be them, and they could me, if there was a different time and a different place.” The so-called “refugee crisis” has turned the attention of States...
29 October 2015 A ‘hotspot’ registration centre for people newly arriving on the Greek island of Lesvos, jointly operated by Greek authorities and European Union agencies, was opened two weeks ago in Moria (16 October). The ‘hotspot’ system is part of the EU’s action...
29 October 2015 A focus paper from the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) puts forward a list of recommendations for authorities when taking fingerprints of asylum seekers to ensure that this process does not violate fundamental rights. Under EU rules,...
29 October 2015 ECRE/ELENA have published an information note which provides background to the Tarakhel judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which ECRE intervened in. In this judgment, the Court prevented the transfer of an asylum-seeking family...
29 October 2015 An emergency meeting was called by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, which took place on 25 October, to agree on concrete, immediate measures to respond to the unprecedented increase in refugees and migrants along the Western Balkans...
27 October 2015 An ECRE delegation, as part of the Asylum Information Database (AIDA) project, undertook a fact-finding visit to Hungary at the end of September in order to gain an in-depth understanding of the new border procedure applied at the Hungarian border and...
23 October 2015 On 16 October 2015, 19 years old Ziahullah Vafa from Afghanistan was shot when trying to cross the Turkish-Bulgarian border by Bulgarian border guards. According to unanimous testimonies collected by the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee of 20 people who...
23 October 2015 “I believe that we all need to seize the current moment of attention and inspire political leaders around the world to really do something about refugee issues, understand them and deal with them in a humane way, in a way that is in accordance with the...
23 October 2015 The ECRE Annual General Conference (AGC) took place last week in The Hague, together with the UNHCR NGO Consultations. The AGC was an occasion for all ECRE member organisations to come together and discuss the most pressing issues, as well as to plan...
23 October 2015 ECRE has published comments on the European Commission’s proposal for a Regulation establishing a common EU list of ‘safe countries of origin’ and amending the recast Asylum Procedures Directive. In the document, ECRE seriously questions the...
