(Brussels) – The European Union’s migration and asylum policies increasingly focused on deterrence in 2024, undermining the rights of people at its borders and beyond, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2025. These policies resulted in increased deaths at sea, unlawful pushbacks at borders, and the return of asylum seekers to countries where they face abuse.
For the 546-page world report, in its 35th edition, Human Rights Watch reviewed human rights practices in more than 100 countries. In much of the world, Executive Director Tirana Hassan writes in her introductory essay, governments cracked down and wrongfully arrested and imprisoned political opponents, activists, and journalists. Armed groups and government forces unlawfully killed civilians, drove many from their homes, and blocked access to humanitarian aid. In many of the more than 70 national elections in 2024, authoritarian leaders gained ground with their discriminatory rhetoric and policies.
“Migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees face violence, illegal pushbacks, and even death as a result of the EU’s focus on deterrence and externalization policies,” said Benjamin Ward, deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “EU leaders need to abandon these harmful strategies, end Europe’s collusion in abuses against people on the move outside its borders, and instead create safe and legal routes for people to seek asylum and safety.”
- The EU Migration and Asylum Pact, adopted in May 2024, includes provisions that will severely curtail rights by making it harder to apply for asylum, increasing detention at borders, and allowing EU countries to suspend access to and deny asylum in vaguely defined situations.
- In 2024, the EU announced new migration partnerships with Egypt and Mauritania and increased border management funding to both countries as well as to Lebanon, following a 2023 deal with Tunisia and ongoing migration control support to Libyan and Moroccan authorities, without effective human rights guarantees.
- Italy and Malta, with support from Frontex aircraft, continued to facilitate interceptions of boats carrying migrants and refugees by Libyan forces and their return to the risk of serious human rights violations.
- Numerous EU countries expressed interest in or endorsed measures to offshore responsibility for asylum seekers. In October and November 2024, Italy transferred the first groups to Albania under a deal by which men of certain nationalities rescued or intercepted by Italy at sea are taken to Albania for processing of their asylum claims, although both groups were later brought back to Italy after Italian judges intervened.
The EU and its member states also faced challenges in other areas in 2024. Human Rights Watch highlighted union-wide concerns over discrimination and intolerance, poverty and inequality, and undermining the rule of law. While EU institutions and governments have acknowledged these issues and in some cases committed to addressing them, concrete action has been slow and insufficient.
The World Report includes chapters on France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Spain, and non-EU countries including the United Kingdom.
“At a time when so much of the world is in crisis, the need for principled leadership based on human rights in Europe is greater than ever,” said Ward. “That depends on European institutions, including the new European Commission, grounding their actions in EU and human rights law and insisting that member states do the same.”