Osnabrück/Berlin, December 20, 2023 – The international children's rights organization terre des hommes is appalled by the agreement reached today between the Council of European Justice and Home Affairs Ministers, the European Commission, and the European Parliament on a reform of the common European asylum system. The border procedures for minors, the massive expansion of the concept of safe third countries, and the lowering of essential procedural guarantees create the basis for the erosion of universally applicable children's rights in the EU and thus the end of the European value system.
“With the agreement announced today, all human rights red lines in the EU have been crossed. In Brussels, the fate of hundreds of thousands of children and young people fleeing persecution and war was also decided. Many of these children and young people now face a life behind barbed wire in isolated detention centers, powerlessness against official decisions, and the risk of being returned to countries that are not actually safe for them. It is particularly shocking that there will be no exceptions to border procedures for families with children of any age. Border procedures under detention or detention-like conditions are and remain a grave violation of children's rights. But the fact that children have rights no longer seems to play a role in the EU. We are disappointed and appalled that the German government and the EU are complicit in this historic breach of children's rights and thus in the abandonment of humanity in the EU,” says Sophia Eckert, migration and legal expert at terre des hommes .
According to reform proposals known to terre des hommes refugee children and young people are also affected without exception by border procedures involving detention or detention-like confinement at the EU's external borders. This violates the right to protection from deprivation of liberty enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Furthermore, their ability to effectively defend themselves against decisions made by authorities is restricted. Without effective legal protection and child-friendly procedural support, the rights and well-being of refugee children in the EU cannot be guaranteed. The expansion of the concept of so-called safe third countries also threatens to have a massive impact on the protection of asylum seekers in the EU.