Europe’s top rights body warns EU nations over ‘cruel’ deportation hubs

Europe’s leading human rights watchdog has urged five EU nations to fully protect the rights under international law of rejected asylum seekers they aim to deport under a planned new system of “return hubs.”

Last month, the European Parliament approved an overhaul of migration policy aimed at speeding up deportations and allowing member states to set up detention centres abroad, in what critics describe as a cruel system that weakens safeguards for asylum seekers.

The Council of Europe, a 46-member, non-EU body that promotes human rights, democracy and the rule of law across the continent, said on Thursday that return hubs and other arrangements to transfer foreign nationals to third countries posed “considerable human rights risks”, including ill-treatment and arbitrary detention.

In letters sent to Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece and the Netherlands, the Council’s human rights commissioner, Michael O’Flaherty, proposed four “guardrails”.

These would include a comprehensive assessment of human rights risks before any action is taken.

Plans would be subject to rigorous monitoring and be governed by legally binding agreements with enforceable rights safeguards.