27th August 2025 | Editorials / Op-eds, News
By Jeff Crisp Irregular arrivals For the past 40 years, the governments of wealthy countries in the Global North have been striving to curtail the arrival of refugees, asylum seekers and irregular migrants from less prosperous parts of the world. In the eyes of these...
17th July 2025 | Editorials / Op-eds, News
By Minos Mouzourakis The Greek government flouts basic asylum rules – again – by banning people irregularly arriving by boat from North Africa from claiming asylum. An amendment voted on 11 July has imposed a three-month ban on such people from applying for asylum and...
26th June 2025 | Editorials / Op-eds, News
By Martin Barber and Jeff Crisp We were both working at the British Refugee Council (BRC) in 1984, when Philip Rudge arrived to set up the office of the modestly-named European Consultation on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) on the top floor of 3-9 Bondway, in Vauxhall in...
19th June 2025 | Editorials / Op-eds, News
By Michiel Kruyt and Femke de Vries On 3 June, the Dutch government collapsed. Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV), walked out of the four-party coalition over a created dispute on asylum policy, effectively bringing down the cabinet of...
21st May 2025 | Editorials / Op-eds, News
Background The 2024 agreement on the Asylum Procedures Regulation (APR) in the Pact on Migration and Asylum included a review of the Safe Third Country (STC) concept due to disagreements among EU member states. The European Commission has completed the review and has...
8th May 2025 | Editorials / Op-eds, News
By Catherine Woollard Week after week, newspaper articles and research publications sound the alarm on the impact of Europe’s demographic crisis. Last week, a piece put the spotlight on Poland, arguing that this is not just an economic question but one of security....