A coalition of human rights organisations, of which PICUM is part, is calling on EU lawmakers to include provisions in the proposed EU AI Act to protect people from harmful and racist AI surveillance technologies used in migration. The proposed legislation does not address the many dangerous uses of AI systems in immigration enforcement, which can lead to discriminatory practices, unjust deportations, and human rights violations. The coalition is calling for bans on racist algorithms, predictive analytics, lie detectors, and emotion recognition tools in the context of migration control. They also warn against leaving the use of AI in migration control to member states, as private actors may exploit loopholes to sell products that violate fundamental rights.

Read more in these joint op-eds on Al Jazeera and Euronews.

Lithuania's parliament passed a new law allowing “volunteers” from any EU state to join its national border guard force and use violence against people crossing in from Belarus. These “volunteers" will be allowed to "use coercion", help make arrests, and perform other patrol guard-like duties. The bill also allows patrol guards to force people back into Belarus. The law has been criticized by human rights campaigners and Amnesty International as a green light to torture.

The Cypriot Minister of Interior has announced plans to step up voluntary returns of migrants from the island, indicating that for the past six years, Cyprus had received a disproportionate number of asylum seekers compared to other EU states in relation to its population. To ease the policy, a deputy ministry of migration will be created. The government is also deploying 220 special guards and installing cameras to monitor the buffer zone between the northern and southern parts of Cyprus, for crossings of migrants.

The EU Council extended on 20 March the mandate of the EU military operation IRINI in the Mediterranean until 2025. This operation does not only aim at enforcing the UN arms embargo on Libya, but also contributing to “the capacity building and training of the Libyan Coast Guard and Navy” to counter human smuggling and trafficking networks. This partnership has been widely criticised, especially by the UN Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Libya, that expressed deep concern over the country’s deteriorating human rights situation in its final report published end of March, pointing to a wide array of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by State security forces and armed militia groups.

The European Parliament has voted in plenary to enter interinstitutional negotiations on several migration files that the civil liberties committee had voted on in March. These files include several proposals of the EU Migration Pact, that would increase detention for people coming to Europe via irregular routes and speed up deportations while lowering procedural safeguards.

In its 2022 annual report, the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) focuses on the prevention of ill-treatment of foreign nationals deprived of their liberty in the context of forced removals at borders. The CPT has reported ill-treatment and repeated pushbacks of foreign nationals across borders (on land and at sea), without effective access to means of protection. The CPT calls on European governments to protect fundamental rights of foreign nationals deprived of their liberty under immigration legislation at the European borders and demands that all European governments reinforce safeguards against ill-treatment and collective deportations.

A High Court judge has ruled that the immigration exemption in the UK Data Protection Act 2018 is incompatible with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), following a legal challenge by the Open Rights Group and the3million. This exemption allows the Home Office and private companies to deny individuals access to personal data held about them on the grounds that it might "prejudice the maintenance of effective immigration control," thus making it harder to challenge wrongful immigration decisions. The Government must now ensure that the Home Office and private companies that are contracted to enforce immigration control comply with GDPR.

A new survey revealed that administrative obstacles are hindering access to healthcare for undocumented migrants in France. The 2019 reform to Urgent Medical Care (aide médicale d’état) requires that an undocumented migrant seeking health care has to have lived in France for at least three months and to file their first application for health care in person. As a result, 64% of those surveyed encountered difficulties accessing healthcare, and 7 out of 10 abandoned their healthcare. The associations demand that all users be welcomed unconditionally and without an appointment in all nearby agencies, under suitable conditions. The survey was carried out in the Ile-de-France region by French NGOs Médecins du Monde, Cimade, and Secours Catholique.

At the end of March, the Greek Parliament approved a new Migration Code that improves several protective measures for children and young people, including the creation of a 10-year residence permit for young adults who were unaccompanied children, if they have completed three years of secondary school before turning 23. The law also extends, from five to ten years, a permit for migrant children and young people who were born in Greece or have completed six years of secondary school before their 23rd birthday. However, Solidarity Now reports that conditions for undocumented migrants to obtain a residence permit if they have lived in Greece for at least seven years have become stricter, as any period in an asylum procedure no longer counts towards this time requirement.

The French Ombudsperson reported that complaints about violations of the fundamental rights of migrants increased by 231% between 2019 and 2022, with most of the difficulties related to access to prefectures to apply for or renew residence permits. Since 2019, appointments must be made online, but the sites are often overwhelmed. This has resulted in many people not being able to obtain an appointment for a first application or a renewal, leading to a "notable and worrying increase" in complaints from people who cannot renew their permits and are forced into irregular situations. The Ombudsperson has called on the government to restore normal access to public services in prefectures and address the issues arising from the digital system.

In a research published in 2018 and updated in April 2023, three economists have analysed the consequences of the regularisation of 600,000 non-EU nationals in Spain in 2005. The main result of this research is that this policy did not lead to a pull effect, but rather encouraged current workers to leave the informal economy, by requiring people to have a contract of at least six months to be regularised. In the long term, the regularisation of undocumented workers did not lead to a reduction in wage levels and has been helpful for public finances.