Category: 3. Fundamental rights – Charter

Human Rights and the European Arrest Warrant: Has the ECJ turned from poacher to gamekeeper?

ORIGINAL PUBLISHED ON EU LAW ANALYSIS

Steve Peers*

From its panicked conception in the febrile months following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) has been the flagship of EU criminal law. Replacing traditional extradition law with a fast-track system which scraps most of the traditional restrictions on extradition, it has alarmed critics concerned by miscarriages of justice, but thrilled supporters who welcomed the speedier return to justice of a greater number of fugitives.

Despite qualms by national constitutional courts, the ECJ has long been insouciant about the human rights critique of the EAW. It dismissed a challenge to the validity of the EAW law on human rights grounds, and (in effect) ridiculed a national court which asked if it was possible to refuse to execute an EAW due to human rights concerns, answering a ‘straw man’ argument the ECJ invented instead of the serious questions sent by the other court. In its Melloni judgment, the ECJ placed a ceiling on the application of national human rights protection to resist execution of an EAW; but it never enforced a corresponding floor for those rights. Again and again, the Court ruled that national courts could only refuse to execute EAWs on the limited grounds expressly mentioned in the EAW law, instead focussing exclusively on the need to make the EAW system as effective as possible.

However, since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, this staunch approach has been mitigated by the adoption of six new EU laws on various aspects of fair trial rights– five of which also confer procedural rights on fugitives challenging the application of an EAW. (On the implementation of the first two of these laws, see the report just adopted by the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency). In the last year, the ECJ has begun to interpret these laws (see the judgments in Covaci, Balogh and Milev).

But even apart from these fair trials laws, the ECJ in the last eighteen months has begun to show a striking concern for ensuring at least some protection for human rights within the EAW system. Last year, in Lanigan (discussed here), the Court ruled that if a fugitive was kept in detention in the executing State while contesting an EAW there, the limits on the length of detention in extradition cases set out in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) apply, by virtue of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

This spring, the ECJ turned its attention to detention conditions in the Member State which issued the EAW. Following soon after concerns expressed by the German constitutional court on these issues (discussed here), the ECJ ruled in Aranyosi and Caldaruru that the German authorities, when executing EAWs issued by Hungary and Romania, had to consider concerns raised by the fugitives about prison overcrowding in those countries, which had led to ECtHR rulings finding violations of Article 3 ECHR (freedom from torture or other inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment). The national court had to apply a two-step procedure in such cases, assessing whether there was a) a systemic failure to ensure decent prison conditions in those States, and b) a ‘real risk’ that the individual fugitive would be subject to such conditions if the EAW was executed.

What if these tests were satisfied? The ECJ was unwilling to backtrack from its position that the list of grounds to refuse to execute an EAW set out in the EAW law is exhaustive. Instead, it ruled that the executing State’s authorities had to postpone execution of the EAW until the situation in the issuing State had improved. (The EAW law is vague about grounds for postponing the execution of an EAW, and the ECJ had already ruled in Lanigan that the deadlines to execute an EAW set out in the law could, in effect, be ignored if necessary). If the fugitive was detained in the executing State in the meantime, the limits on detention set out in Lanigan applied, with the additional proviso that a fugitive could not be detained indefinitely pending execution of an EAW. (In the later case of JZ, the ECJ aligned the definition of ‘detention’ in the EAW with the ECtHR case law on this issue).

This was only the beginning of the ECJ’s scrutiny of issuing States’ laws and practice in the EAW context. In Bob-Dogi, the Court ruled that Hungary could not simply issue EAWs as a stand-alone measure, with no underlying national arrest warrant, inter alia because the purpose of requiring the prior issue of a national arrest warrant was to ensure the protection of the suspect’s fundamental rights. The previously paramount objective of efficiency of the EAW system – which would obviously have dictated the opposite conclusion – was mentioned only in passing. Moreover, the Court side-stepped its prior refusal to accept additional grounds for refusal to execute an EAW, concluding that the EAW had not been validly issued in the first place.

Next, in Dworzecki, the ECJ insisted that a Member State issuing an EAW following a trial held in absentia had to have made proper efforts to find the fugitive before the trial. In this case, the law expressly allows for non-execution of the EAW.

Finally, in a trilogy of cases decided last week, the Court ruled that issuing Member States don’t have full discretion to decide what a ‘judicial authority’ is, for the purpose of issuing EAWs. The concept extended beyond judges to include those administering the justice system, such as Hungarian prosecutors (Ozcelik). However, it does not extend to the Swedish police (Poltorak), or to officials in the Lithuanian justice ministry (Kovalkovas). (British readers may wish to compare these rulings to the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Assange case).

Again, as in the Bob-Dogi judgment, the Court side-stepped the ‘exhaustive grounds for non-execution’ problem which it had previously created for itself, by ruling (in Poltorak and Kovalkovas) that the relevant EAWs had never been validly issued at all. Also, in an interesting use of ‘soft law’, the Court ruled that Sweden and Lithuania could not argue that those invalid EAWs should remain valid for a limited period until they changed their laws, since the Council had warned them back in 2007 in an evaluation report that these practices infringed the EAW law. Criminal defence lawyers – and justice ministry officials – may want to look at the Council evaluations of all Member States in detail in this light, since they contain many other criticisms of national implementation of the EAW.

Comments

Has the Court turned from poacher to gamekeeper of human rights in the EAW context? Certainly there are still many concerns about miscarriages of justice as regards the EAW (see the Fair Trials website, for instance). But the rulings suggest a significant change of direction, which addresses some concerns and may have opened up the door to addressing others. What might explain this turn-around?

One factor may be the ruling of the German constitutional court on detention conditions in the EAW context, although it’s notable that the ECJ was never previously receptive to constitutional courts’ concerns about the EAW. Another factor may be a willingness to compromise after the ECJ’s controversial ruling on EU accession to the ECHR, in which it lambasted the draft accession treaty for (among other things) not taking sufficient account of the ECJ’s case law on mutual recognition in Justice and Home Affairs matters, which only allowed for human rights to trump mutual recognition in ‘exceptional’ cases. It’s possible that having marked its territory in that judgment, the ECJ felt it could relax and adopt a more flexible approach of its own volition (and under its own control), which might facilitate discussions on renegotiation of the accession agreement.

Another aspect of the background to this case law may be concerns about the adequate protection of human rights and the rule of law in a number of Member States. The formal process for sanctioning or warning Member States about such concerns is set out in Article 7 TEU, but the EU is unwilling to use it at the moment. The preamble to the EAW law says that the EAW system can only be fully suspended as regards an entire Member State if Article 7 is invoked. The ECJ clocked that provision in Aranyosi and Caldaruru, but then concocted the compromise position of postponing execution of EAWs in individual cases until concerns about detention conditions could be addressed: a measured, individualised solution for these particular human rights problems with the EAW.

Furthermore, the guarantee of judicial control of the issue of EAWs in recent judgments is expressly justified by reference to ‘the separation of powers which characterises the operation of the rule of law’. Despite the reluctance of the EU to chastise Member States for systematic concerns about the rule of law, the CJEU’s rulings at least ensure that any general human rights concerns are addressed at the level of application of EU legislation.

Indeed, these recent judgments might not be the end of the story: they can fuel arguments for the postponement or invalidity or EAWs due to other human rights concerns too. In particular, fugitives could argue that the prospect of long pre-trial detention in another Member State is also a reason to postpone execution of an EAW – although this argument is only coherent if the fugitive is not being detained in the executing State in the meantime. Already the Aranyosi and Caldaruru judgment raises awkward questions about how to judge what happens in another Member State’s prisons – so much so that the German courts have referred the Aranyosi case back to the CJEU with further questions.  Postponing the execution of an EAW does not, by itself, tackle the underlying problem of prison overcrowding, and it leads to the risk that those who have committed crimes may consider moving to another Member State to increase their odds of enjoying de facto impunity for them.

This strengthens the case for EU legislative intervention as regards prison conditions and length of pre-trial detention in the EAW context. The Commission issued a Green Paper on this issue back in 2011, and Member States were not enthusiastic. But the Commission has indicated in light of the recent rulings that it may make a proposal in future. (See also the new report of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency on these issues). This would be a good opportunity to make further reforms to the EAW system, to require a proportionality check before issuing EAWs in the first place – so that no one is subject to an EAW for the theft of a piglet, or someone else’s beer at a house party – and to build in more frequent use of European Supervision Orders (a form of ‘Euro-bail’), the EU laws on transfer of prisoners and sentences, and the use of modern technology to conduct more criminal proceedings with the virtual (but not the physical) presence of the suspect (see generally the Ludford report on possible reforms of the EAW system). There is a better balance between effective prosecutions and human rights concerns waiting to be struck.

Human & humanitarian smugglers: Europe’s scapegoat in the ‘refugee crisis’

ORIGINAL PUBLISHED ON EU LAW ANALYSIS

by Rachel Landry, Fellow for Refugee Policy, Center on National Security, Fordham Law School

In the middle of one night in January 2016, Salam Aldeen received what had now become a routine call regarding boats in distress off of the coast of Greece. Since co-founding Team Humanity, a volunteer rescue organisation, in September 2015, Aldeen had responded to distress calls from approximately 200 boats with a total of approximately 10,000 refugees on board. As per protocol, Aldeen informed the Greek coast guard that he was going out in search of the boats. Yet on this particular evening, Aldeen and the four other volunteer lifeguards with him never reached the refugees in need of rescue.

When a military ship came threateningly close to their rescue boat, they altered course and headed back to shore. Before they reached land, two military vessels and the Greek coast guard surrounded them, ultimately arresting them and confiscating their boat. Their alleged crime: human smuggling. Their actions: attempting to fulfil the widely acknowledged duty to rescue at sea. Aldeen was released from prison after paying a significant fee, but is unable to leave Greece and is required to check in weekly with the Greek authorities. He awaits trial and faces up to ten years in prison.

The arrest of Aldeen and the four volunteers is far from unique. Deeply entangled within the EU’s robust fight against human smuggling in the current ‘refugee crisis’ is the threat of criminalisation of a range of humanitarian acts, which should not be punished but rather praised. The European Commission (EC) has rhetorically acknowledged the importance of ‘avoiding risks of criminalisation of those who provide humanitarian assistance to migrants in distress’, yet the actions of individual Member States suggest otherwise.

The EC is scheduled to release a proposal by the end of 2016 to ‘improve the existing EU legal framework to tackle migrant smuggling’. As such, it has been reviewing Council Directive 2002/90/EC of 28 November 2002 defining the facilitation of unauthorised entry, transit and residence (Facilitation Directive), legislation that governs human smuggling in addition to other acts facilitating the transit and stay of irregular migrants. Given the much-needed review of the Facilitation Directive and the current strategy to combat abhorrent and ‘humanitarian’ acts of smuggling alike, it is a critical moment to reflect upon the moral quality and complexities of human smuggling.

I offer five observations as a preliminary framework for considering the deficiencies in the Facilitation Directive and where the boundary between blameworthy acts of smuggling and blameless acts of ‘humanitarian smuggling’ should be drawn. These observations stem from my recently published research through the Refugee Studies Centre, The ‘humanitarian smuggling’ of refugees: Criminal offence or moral obligation?

  1.       Combatting human smuggling and all humanitarian acts construed as such are in service of the larger goals of deterring and securitising irregular migration.

The EU is employing all possible tactics to deter refugees and migrants from attempting to reach its Member States’ shores – from the United Nations Security Council Resolution permitting EU security forces to intercept vessels suspected of human smuggling off the coast of Libya, to the deployment of NATO warships in the Aegean Sea, to the EU-Turkey deal to send those arriving irregularly back to Turkey. These policies of deterrence and securitisation are neither ad hoc nor unprecedented. Rather, they are integral to EU law governing irregular migrants and those who assist them.

Notably, the Facilitation Directive is first and foremost concerned with deterring irregular migration. As the first paragraph of the Directive states: ‘[o]ne of the objectives of the European Union is the gradual creation of an area of freedom, security, and justice, which means, inter alia, that illegal immigration must be combatted’. Prohibiting the facilitation of irregular entry is merely one means to combat irregular migration. As Spena argues, ‘[p]aradoxical as it may seem, in the Facilitation Directive’s approach, smuggling, as a form of facilitation, is only wrongful in an ancillary way, as if it was only a form of complicity in the real wrong which is the wrong of irregular migration’. The focus on deterring irregular migration produces a disregard for the smuggled migrants themselves, highlighted by the fact that the Directive does not define its relationship to international human rights or refugee law.

  1.     The Facilitation Directive, as transposed into national law, permits the criminalisation of genuinely humanitarian acts.  

The infringements set out in the Facilitation Directive mirror its expansive intent to sanction, most regularly through criminal law, a wide range of activities that may support irregular migration. Article 1.1.a stipulates that Member States:

shall adopt appropriate sanctions on: any person who intentionally assists a person who is not a national of a Member State to enter, or transit across, the territory of a Member State in breach of the laws of the State concerned on the entry or transit of aliens.  

Article 1.2 includes an optional ‘humanitarian clause’, which applies only to Article 1.1a such that ‘[a]ny Member State may decide not to impose sanctions…where the aim of the behaviour is to provide humanitarian assistance to the person concerned’.

The majority of Member States have transposed Article 1.1a expansively, permitting the criminalisation of a broad range of individuals facilitating irregular entry – from members of smuggling rings putting refugees in deliberate danger to volunteers rescuing refugees in peril at sea. The optional humanitarian exemption ultimately permits the criminalisation of what seems to be a limitless spectrum of activity at the national level, failing to enable subjects to orientate their behaviour accordingly and even prohibiting ethically defensible, if not praiseworthy, acts like those of Aldeen. According to a 2014 report by the Fundamental Rights Agency, the optional ‘humanitarian clause’ has been explicitly transposed in a variety of forms at the national level in only eight Member States.

  1.        The historic example of the rescue of the Danish Jews during World War II clearly illustrates, with the benefit of hindsight, the moral necessity and praiseworthiness of certain acts of smuggling.

The current ‘refugee crisis’ is regularly referred to as the largest crisis since World War II. Equally, international cooperation to resettle refugees in the aftermath of WWII is frequently invoked as a response that should be emulated today. Less frequently invoked, however, are those ‘humanitarian smugglers’ – known today simply as heroes – who rescued Jews from persecution long before the international community stepped in.

In 1943, 95% of the Jewish population in Denmark was able to escape deportation to concentration camps, in large part due to the collective action of fellow citizens and the Danish resistance movement. When the Nazi regime formalised the order to deport Danish Jews to concentration camps in September 1943, within two weeks Danes mobilised to successfully smuggle more than 7,200 Danish Jews and 680 non-Jewish family members to safety in Sweden, predominantly by way of Danish fishermen.

Those individuals who effectively evacuated almost the entire Jewish population out of Denmark not only made an assessment of the likely consequences and certainty of the impending harm for the Danish Jews if they did not act, but also accepted significant risks to their own lives as a result of their actions. If caught by the Nazis, those who aided and abetted Jews faced criminalisation and even possibly execution. The heroic rescue of the Danish Jews from impending deportation to concentration camp is but one reminder of the historical continuity, praiseworthiness, and unfortunate necessity of ‘humanitarian smuggling’.

  1.     The drafters of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (Refugee Convention) considered including a safeguard against penalisation for individuals assisting refugees to cross borders irregularly on humanitarian grounds.

Under certain circumstances, Article 31 of the Refugee Convention provides that presumptive refugees may cross borders irregularly and nevertheless be exempt from punishment. The drafters recognised that given the unique and vulnerable predicament of refugees, a refugee may have no choice but to cross borders irregularly and should not be penalised for doing so.

In light of the expansive scope of the Facilitation Directive and the threatened criminalisation of humanitarians like Aldeen, it may come as a surprise that some of the drafters – in particular the Swiss government – recognised that safeguards should exist not only for refugees, but also their rescuers. According to the French representative, organisations assisting refugees to reach safety were engaging in ‘an obvious humanitarian duty’. The French government was nevertheless opposed to modifying the language of Article 31, fearing it would encourage refugee organisations to become ‘organisations for the illegal crossing of frontiers’. Similarly, the United States representative acknowledged that the failure to include a safeguard for those proving humanitarian assistance to refugees irregularly crossing borders might be ‘a possible oversight in the drafting of the article’. Yet, the United States government did not support including protections for those providing assistance.

There is, of course, no safeguard for ‘humanitarian smugglers’ in the Refugee Convention. Yet, there was a recognition that governments should not – and a false assumption that they would not – criminalise those assisting refugees for humanitarian reasons.

  1.     The November 2015 landmark Supreme Court of Canada case, R. v. Appulonappa, may set a legal precedent for a more narrowly drafted smuggling offence in the Facilitation Directive to decriminalise ‘humanitarian smugglers’.

The November 2015 Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) case, R v. Appulonappa, sets a legal precedent for a narrower smuggling prohibition. The SCC ruled that its law criminalising smuggling, S. 117 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, was overbroad and should be ‘read down…as not applying to persons providing humanitarian aid to asylum-seekers or to asylum-seekers who provide each other mutual aid (including aid to family members)’. S. 117 is not dissimilar to Article 1.1 of the Facilitation Directive in that it theoretically criminalises anyone who facilitates irregular entry, regardless of motive or the means by which the act is carried out.

The SCC ruled that S. 117 exceeded its legislative intent of criminalising organised crime: ‘[a] broad punitive goal that would prosecute persons with no connection to and no furtherance of organised crime is not consistent with Parliament’s purpose’. Possible amendments to S. 117 may serve as a model for a more narrowly drafted prohibition that more accurately delineates between blameless and blameworthy acts of smuggling.

Conclusion

These five observations offer entry points into the moral complexities of human smuggling and the legal imperative of decriminalising humanitarian acts of the facilitation of irregular entry. Ultimately, if the EC intends to provide recommendations to amend the Facilitation Directive that reflect the need to avoid criminalising humanitarian assistance to irregular migrants, it will first need to more narrowly and clearly define acts of the facilitation of irregular entry worthy of criminalisation. The EC’s challenge lies with the fact that the primary purpose of the Facilitation Directive is to deter irregular migration and a narrower directive would ultimately undermine this objective.

In the current crisis, human smugglers – and all individuals deemed as such – have become Europe’s scapegoat. Targeting human smugglers worthy of criminalisation and those ‘humanitarian smugglers’ worthy of praise is Europe’s Band-Aid solution to a problem that can only be solved through safe and legal pathways for refugees to reach Europe.

 

INVESTMENT COURT SYSTEM IN CETA TO BE JUDGED BY THE ECJ

ORIGINAL PUBLISHED ON EU LAW BLOG  ON OCTOBER 31, 2016 (EMPHASIS ARE ADDED)
By Laurens Ankersmit

 

Last Thursday, the leaders of the Belgian federal government and the regional and community governments reached a compromise deal  over the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). One of the key outcomes is that the Belgian federal government will seek the Opinion of the European Court of Justice on the compatibility of the Investment Court System (ICS) in Chapter Eight of CETA with the Treaties. As soon as the Belgian federal government makes the request for an Opinion, the Court will be able to express itself on this contentious legal issue. In this post, I will provide some background on the origins of the Walloon request before explaining why ICS could potentially pose a legal problem for the EU.

Wallonia’s longstanding resistance against CETA and the resolution of 25 April of 2016

To insiders, the resistance put up by Wallonia in particular should have been no surprise. Over the past few years, the Walloon and Brussels parliaments have had extensive debates on the merits of CETA and have been increasingly critical of the deal. One of the main and more principled sources of opposition was the inclusion of ICS in CETA, a judicial mechanism that allows foreign investors to sue governments over a breach of investor rights contained in the agreement.

In the Walloon parliament this resulted in the adoption of a resolution on the 25thof April of this year (6 months ago) listing the key problems Wallonia has in relation to CETA. In that resolution the very first request by the Walloon government was to ask the Belgian federal government:

“de solliciter l’avis de la Cour de justice européenne (CJE) sur la compatibilité de l’accord avec les Traités  européens  sur  la  base  de  l’article  218  (11)  du TFUE  pour  éviter  qu’un  accord  incompatible  avec  les Traités européens soit conclu et de ne pas procéder à la ratification de cet accord tant que la CJE ne s’est pas prononcée.”

In other words, the Walloon parliament wanted to know whether ICS is compatible with the EU Treaties, and asked the Belgian federal government to make use of the procedure of Article 218 (11) TFEU to request the CJEU’s opinion on the issue. In the words of the Court, that procedure ‘has the aim of forestalling complications which would result from legal disputes concerning the compatibility with the Treaties of international agreements binding upon the European Union’. In particular, the advantage of the procedure was to avoid ‘serious difficulties’ for both the EU internally and for third parties that would result from a successful challenge of the agreement after its entry into force (paras. 47-48 Opinion 1/09).

Wallonia could not make this request itself, as this power is reserved to the federal level of the Belgian government. However, Belgium is in many ways a ‘little Europe’ as its regional governments need to authorize federal action at the international level in a number of fields, including trade. As a result, Wallonia had to broker a deal with the federal government of Belgium in exchange for authorising Belgium’s signature to CETA.

 Is ICS compatible with the Treaties?

The Walloon request did not come out of the blue. The issue of the compatibility of Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) and ICS (a form of ISDS) with the Treaties has been a contentious issue among EU law insiders for a while. Recently 101 law professors objected to ICS in an open letter because ICS is

“in strong tension with the rule of law and  democratic  principles  enshrined  in  national  constitutions  and  European  law.  Additionally, [ICS is] likely to affect the autonomy of the European Union’s legal order, as the investment tribunals’ binding and enforceable decisions on state liability threaten the effective and uniform application of EU law.”

An increasing number of academic contributions have also raised this issue (see here, here, here, here and here for instance). Even ISDS’s staunchest supportershave recognized that there is a serious legal issue when it comes to the compatibility of ISDS with EU law. The European Association of Judges(representing 44 national associations of judges) and the German Association of Judges (representing 16 0000 German judges and public prosecutors) have opposed ICS inter alia on the ground that the system might not be compatible with EU law.

Within the EU institutions and bodies, the compatibility of ISDS/ICS has clearly also been an issue. The European Parliament in its TTIP resolution of 8 July of last year called upon the Commission to ensure that the “jurisdiction of courts of the EU and of the Member States is respected.” In a praiseworthy feat of transparency, the opinion of the Legal Service of the European Parliament on the issue of compatibility was published this summer (see for a critical assessment of that opinion here).

The European Economic and Social Committee in an Opinion adopted on 27 May 2015 also stated that:

“[There] are considerable EU treaty-related and constitutional law concerns regarding the relations of ISDS ruling with the EU legal order. Private arbitration courts have the capacity to make rulings which do not comply with EU law or infringe the CFR [Charter of Fundamental Rights]. For this reason, the EESC feels that it is absolutely vital for compliance of ISDS with EU law to be checked by the ECJ in a formal procedure for requesting an opinion, before the competent institutions reach a decision and before the provisional entry into force of any IIAs, negotiated by the EC.”

The legal service of the European Commission has itself been busy fighting intra-EU bilateral investment treaties containing ISDS. In addition to a number of ongoing infringement proceedings, the legal service also wrote several amicus curiae briefs contesting the jurisdiction of the investment tribunals. In the Achmeacase, for instance, the Commission wrote:

There are some provisions of the Dutch-Slovak BIT that raise fundamental questions regarding compatibility with EU law. Most prominent among these are the provisions of the BIT providing for an investor-State arbitral mechanism (set out in Art. 8), and the provisions of the BIT providing for an inter-State arbitral mechanism (set out in Art. 10). These provisions conflict with EU law on the exclusive competence of the EU court[s] for claims which involve EU law, even for claims where EU law would only partially be affected. The European Commission must therefore […] express its reservation with respect to the Arbitral Tribunal’s competence to arbitrate the claim brought before it by Eureko B.V.’ (see para. 193 of the award)

The autonomy of the EU legal order and the preliminary reference procedure as the keystone of Europe’s judicial system

 So what are the main legal issues underlying ICS and EU law? It is clear that the Treaties in principle permit international agreements providing for state-to-state dispute settlement between the EU and third countries (such as the WTO’s dispute settlement body). Such state-to-state dispute settlement mechanisms do not encroach on the powers of the ECJ, because TFEU Part Six, title 1, chapter 1, section 5 does not grant the EU courts the power to hear such disputes.

However, when it comes to claims by individuals involving questions of EU law, the situation is radically different. The preliminary reference procedure in article 267 TFEU gives the courts of the Member States and the European Court of Justice important powers to resolve such cases. In fact, the ECJ itself refers to this procedure as the ‘keystone’ of the EU’s judicial system. It is perhaps important to recall that Article 267 TFEU was central to the ECJ’s reasoning when it found that the Treaties constituted ‘a new legal order’ that gives individuals, not just the Member States, rights and obligations whose uniform interpretation the European Court of Justice oversees.

The ECJ has made clear in no uncertain terms that it has the exclusive power to give definitive interpretations of EU law and therefore ensure the uniform interpretation of EU law across Europe (See Opinion 2/13, paras. 244-248).However, as a fundamental purpose of ICS in CETA is to enable investors to challenge not only EU acts and decisions based on these acts, but also national acts which might involve EU law somehow, an ICS tribunal would have to interpret and give meaning to EU law. Similarly to the context of human rights law, ICS will therefore encroach on the powers of the EU courts to rule on questions of EU law. Furthermore, ICS in CETA does not require the exhaustion of domestic remedies, which would soften the risk of divergent interpretation as well as respect the powers of the courts of the Member States to hear claims by individuals involving questions of EU law. ICS in CETA also does not require prior involvement of the ECJ for questions of EU law faced by these ICS tribunals.

CETA’s safeguards

 To be sure, the Commission has implicitly admitted and sought to address this problem in CETA. In contrast to the EU – Singapore FTA, article 8.31 (2) CETA states that tribunals ‘may consider’ domestic law ‘as a matter of fact’. The provision continues by stating  that in ‘doing so, the Tribunal shall follow the prevailing interpretation given to the domestic law by the courts or authorities of that Party and any meaning given to domestic law by the Tribunal shall not be binding upon the courts or the authorities of that Party.’

The question is whether these provisions are sufficient. For one, it is hard to see how law can be considered ‘as a matter of fact’ since law is a social construction. This approach likely derives from international law circles to make international law more acceptable to domestic legal systems. However, as CETA will become an integral part of the EU legal order this concept will find its way into EU law with potentially problematic consequences. What if the highest courts in the Member States no longer feel required to make preliminary references because they can consider EU law as a matter of fact, as these tribunals are allowed to do?

For another, following the prevailing interpretation given to EU law, begs the question what happens if no such interpretation exists. CILFIT makes clear that this is anything but an exceptional situation.

Lastly, one may wonder whether stipulating that interpretation of domestic law is not binding is sufficient, considering the considerable financial consequences of the awards that are themselves binding and the fact that ICS contains an appeal mechanism, in which the appeal tribunal can further solidify a particular interpretation of EU law.

 Potential negative consequences for the EU’s Internal market

 ICS in CETA also poses challenges for the proper functioning of the EU’s internal market rules. CETA’s ICS provides for a discriminatory remedy contrary to articles 45, 54, and 56 TFEU, because Canadian investors can bring claims on behalf of their EU incorporated companies. For example, a Canadian-owned Slovak company could be privileged over a Dutch company operating in Slovakia, because the Canadian-owned Slovak company would have recourse to an alternative form of dispute settlement not available to the Dutch company. Moreover, ICS awards can counteract national and EU provisions imposing financial burdens on individuals and corporations (including provisions on fees, taxes, penalties, fines and environmental liability). While the Commission’s view seems to differ, the problem goes beyond mere questions of paying back unlawfully granted state-aid.

An undertaking such as Intel could opt to challenge the Commission’s 1 billion Euro fine for its abuse of a dominant position on the microprocessors market, because it considers the Commission to have violated the principle of presumption of innocence and therefore a breach of due process under the ‘fair and equitable treatment’ standard.

The reader is referred to the academic sources cited above for a more elaborate discussion on the legal pitfalls of ISDS and ICs under EU law.

Conclusion

To me, one of the most astounding aspects of this story is that it took the defiance of the Walloons to get a preliminary check by the ECJ on whether ICS is legal in the first place. The Commission could have easily added the question of compatibility of ISDS in the EU-Singapore Free Trade Agreement to its request for an Opinion in Opinion 2/15. That opinion was requested in July last year, after the ECJ delivered its Opinion 2/13. It was obvious to informed Court watchers at the time that Opinion 2/13 raised serious questions regarding the compatibility of ISDS and ICS with the Treaties. Indeed, it is quite clear from an access to documents request made that the Commission’s legal service was well aware of the potential negative implications.

Instead of going for a ‘better safe than sorry’ approach (the explicit purpose of the 218 (11) TFEU procedure), the Commission took the political risk of negotiating and concluding an agreement that could potentially be annulled afterwards. That would have not only embarrassed the EU internationally, it could have resulted in serious constitutional law issues, because the EU and its Member States might have faced ICS awards binding under international law that were in conflict with EU law (not least because of CETA article 30.9 (2) ’s so-called ‘sunset clause’ allowing for claims up to 20 years after termination of the agreement). In that sense, it appears that Wallonia did Europe and its trade partners a huge favour by seeking clarity over this issue before the EU enters into binding commitments in international agreements containing investor-state dispute settlement.

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‘I Travel, therefore I Am a Suspect’: an overview of the EU PNR Directive

ORIGINAL PUBLISHED ON  EU Immigration and Asylum Law and Policy BLOG

By Niovi Vavoula, Queen Mary University of London

According to the PNR (Passenger Name Record) Directive 2016/681 of 27 April2016, a series of everyday data of all air passengers (third-country nationals but also EU citizens, including those on intra-Schengen flights) will soon be transferred to specialised units to be analysed in order to identify persons of interest in relation to terrorist offences and other serious crimes. This new instrument raises once again fundamental rights challenges posed by its future operation, particularly in relation to privacy and citizenship rights. Therefore, the story of the PNR Directive, as described below, is probably not finished as such concerns open up the possibility of a future involvement of the Court of Justice.

1. The story behind the EU PNR System

In the aftermath of 9/11 and under the direct influence of how the terrorist attacks took place, the US legislature established inextricable links between the movement of passengers, ‘border security’ and the effective fight against international terrorism. Strong emphasis was placed on prevention through pre-screening of passengers, cross-checking against national databases and identification of suspicious behaviours through dubious profiling techniques. At the heart of this pre-emptive logic has been the adoption of legislation obliging airlines flying into the US to provide their domestic authorities with a wide range of everyday data on their passengers. These so-called PNR data constitute records of each passenger’s travel arrangements and contain the information necessary for air carriers to manage flight reservations and check-in systems. Under this umbrella definition, a broad array of data may be included: from information on name, passport, means of payment, travel arrangements and contact details to dietary requirements and requests for special assistance. Amidst concerns regarding the compliance of such mechanisms with EU privacy and data protection standards, this model was internalized at EU level through the conclusion of three PNR Agreements with the US – one in 2004, which wasstruck down by the CJEU in 2006, and others in 2007 and 2012. In addition, PNR Agreements with Canada (currently awaiting litigation before the CJEU) andAustralia have also been adopted.

The idea of developing a similar system to process EU air travel data had been on the agenda for almost a decade, particularly since the EU-US PNR Agreements contain reciprocity clauses referring to the possibility of the EU developing such systems. The first proposal for a Framework Decision dates back to 2007. However, no agreement was reached until the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty. A revised proposal was released in 2011, essentially mimicking the EU-US PNR model, at least as regards the types of data to be processed and the focus on assessing the risks attached to passengers as a mean of preventing terrorist attacks or other serious crimes. In comparison to the proposed Framework Decision it constituted an improvement (for instance, it provided for a reduced retention period and prohibited the processing of sensitive data), yet it was met with great scepticism by a number of EU actors, including the European Data Protection Supervisor, the Fundamental Rights Agency and the Article 29 Working Party who argued that it failed to respect the principles of necessity and proportionality. Eventually, the proposal was rejected by the European Parliament on fundamental rights grounds, but the voting was postponed and the proposal was transferred back to the LIBE Committee.

The EU PNR project was brought back to life after the Charlie Hebdo events in January 2015. In the extraordinary JHA Council meeting of 20 November, immediately after the Paris terrorist attacks, the Council reiterated ‘the urgency and priority to finalise an ambitious EU PNR before the end of 2015’. Indeed, on 4 December 2015 a compromise text was agreed. A few days later, the Council confirmed the agreement, but the Parliament did not give its blessing until April 2016, presumably in the light of the negotiations on the Data Protection legislative reforms, which were running in parallel. The fact that the legality of the EU-Canada PNR Agreement was disputed did not affect the course of the negotiations.

2. The EU PNR Directive in a nutshell

The EU PNR Directive places a duty on airline carriers operating international flights between the EU and third countries to forward PNR data of all passengers (as set out in Annex 1) to the Passenger Information Unit (PIU) established at domestic level for this purpose (Article 4). According to Article 2 of the Directive, Member States are given the discretion to extend the regime set out in the Directive to intra-EU flights, or to a selection of them (for a discussion see Council Documents 8016/11 and 9103/11, partly accessible). Perhaps unsurprisingly, all participating Member States have declared their intention to make use of their discretion.

Once transmitted, the data will be stored and analysed by the PIU. The purpose of this is to ‘identify persons who were previously unsuspected of involvement in terrorism or serious crime’ and require further examination by the competent authorities in relation to the offences listed in Annex II of the Directive. Contrary to the Commission’s assertions that PNR data will be used in different ways – reactively, pro-actively and in real-time – the focus on prevention is central. The analysis entails a risk assessment of all passengers prior to their travel on the basis of predetermined criteria to be decided by the respective PIU and possibly involving cross-checking with existing blacklists (Article 6(3)).

Furthermore, the PIUs will respond to requests by national authorities to access the data on a case-by-case basis and subject to sufficient indication (Article 6(2(b)). Nevertheless, processing should not take place on the basis of sensitive data revealing race, ethnic origin, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, trade union membership, health or sexual orientation etc. (Recital 20). According to Article 12, the initial retention period is six months, after which PNR data will be depersonalised, meaning that the PIU is entrusted with the task of masking out the names, address and contact information, payment information, frequent flyer information, general remarks and all API data. This process should not be confused with anonymisation, as the data could be re-identifiable and may still be used for criminal law purposes under ‘very strict and limited conditions’ (Recital 25). Therefore, upon expiry of the six-month retention period, disclosure of the full PNR data is permitted if so approved by a judicial authority or another national authority competent to review whether the conditions have been met and subject to information and ex post review by the Data Protection Officer of the PIU (Articles 12(3) and 5).

3. Privacy and surveillance of movement

The challenges that the development of the EU PNR system poses to the protection of privacy and data protection rights are acute. In essence, as with thePNR Agreements, the Directive allows the systematic, blanket and indiscriminate transfer, storage and further processing of a wide range of personal data of millions of travellers from and to the EU. Drawing from Digital Rights Ireland and the recent opinion of AG Mengozzi on the EU-Canada PNR Agreement, the interference with the rights to privacy (Article 7 EUCFR and 8 ECHR) and data protection (Article 8 EUCFR) is particularly serious. On the basis of the data collected, which include biographic information, credit card details and contact information, law enforcement authorities shall be able to compile a rather complete profile of travellers’ private lives.

The involvement of the private sector in the fight against terrorism and serious crime is considerably extended, particularly if one takes into account that the obligations on air carriers are extended to non-carrier economic operators (e.g. travel agencies). In addition, the inclusion of intra-EU flights within the scope of the Directive significantly expands the reach of surveillance. Indeed, back in 2011, it was noted that intra-EU flights represent the majority of EU flights (42%) followed by international flights (36%), and only 22% of flights operate within a single Member State (Council Document 8016/11). In this framework, the movement of the vast majority of travellers, including EU citizens, is placed under constant monitoring, irrespective of the fact that they are a priori innocent and not suspected of any criminal offence. In fact, the operation of the PNR scheme signifies the reversal of the presumption of innocence, whereby everyone is deemed as a potential security risk, thus necessitating their examination in order to confirm or rebut this presumption. Besides, there is no differentiation between flights transporting persons at risk and others.

Furthermore, the risk assessment will take place in a highly obscure manner, particularly since the Directive fails to prescribe comprehensively and in detail how the data will be analysed. The underlying rationale is the profiling of all passengers and the identifying of behavioural patterns in a probabilistic logic, but nowhere in the Directive it is indicated that this is indeed the case. This lack of clarity raises concerns considering that the recently adopted Data Protection Directive includes a definition of profiling (Article 3(4)). Moreover, it is stated that ‘relevant databases’ may be consulted, however, it is not clear which these are. For instance, a possible examination on a routine basis of the databases storing asylum seekers’ fingerprints’ or visa applicants’ data (Eurodac and VIS respectively) will frustrate their legal framework, resulting in a domino effect of multiple function creeps. It may even grow the appetite for Member States to desire the systematic processing of EU nationals’ personal data in centralised databases in the name of a more ‘efficient’ fight against terrorism.

This ambiguous modus operandi of PIUs may even call into question the extent to which the interference with privacy is ‘in accordance with law’ (Article 8(2) ECHR) or in EU terms ‘provided for by law’ (Article 52(1) EU Charter). According to settled case law of the ECtHR, every piece of legislation should meet the requirements of accessibility and foreseeability as to its effects (Rotaru v Romania). The lack of clear rules as to how the processing of data will take place may suggest that travellers cannot foresee the full extent of the legislation.

Another contested issue is the ambiguous definitions of terrorism and serious crimes at EU level. The offences falling under the remits of terrorism are currently revised, which had led to criticism for lack of clarity, whereas the definition of serious offences (acts punishable by a custodial sentence or detention order of a maximum period of three years or longer) constitutes a relatively low threshold, particularly in those Member States where domestic criminal law allows for potentially long custodial sentences for minor crimes. In addition, as regards the conditions of access by national competent authorities, the requirement that the request must be based on ‘sufficient indication’ seems to falls short of the criteria established in Digital Rights Ireland. The threshold is particularly low and may lead to generalised consultation by law enforcement authorities, whereas it is uncertain who will check that there is indeed sufficient indication. As for the offences covered by the scope of the Directive, although Annex II sets out a list in this regard, PNR data could still be used for other offences, including minor ones, when these are detected in the course of enforcement action further to the initial processing.

Moreover, in relation to the period for which the data will be retained, it appears that the EU institutions by no means have a clear understanding of what constitutes a proportionate retention period. For instance, the 2007 proposal envisaged an extensive retention period of five years, after which time the data would be depersonalised and kept for another eight years, whereas the 2011 proposal prescribed a significantly reduced initial retention period of 30 days, after which the data would be anonymised and kept for a further period of five years. In its General Approach (Council Document 14740/15), the Council called for an extension of the initial retention period to two years, followed by another three years of storage for depersonalised data. A more privacy-friendly approach can be found in an Opinion of the Council Legal Service dating from 2011, according to which the data of passengers in risky flights would be initially retained for 30 days and then be held for an overall period of six months (Council Document 8850/11 – in German). Some Member States supported a retention period of less than 30 days (Council Document 11392/11). Although it is welcomed that there are two sets of deadlines and, more importantly, that re-personalisation may take place only under limited circumstances. However, there is no indication of why the chosen retention periods are proportionate. Furthermore, an approach suggesting a differentiation between flights at risk or not at risk, with different retention periods, seems more balanced.

4. Free movement and citizenship concerns

In addition to the privacy challenges highlighted above, another point of concern is whether the processing of PNR data, including on intra-EU flights, could infringe free movement enjoyed by EU citizens. In this respect, the Commission Legal Service found that the EU PNR does not obstruct free movement (see Council Document 8230/11, which is partially available to the public, although the outcome of the opinion is attested in Council Document 8016/11). Nonetheless, the Parliament managed to include a reference that any assessments on the basis of PNR data shall not jeopardise the right of entry to the territory of the Member States concerned (in Article 4). The extent to which this reference is sufficient is doubtful.

According to Article 21 of the Schengen Borders Code, police controls performed in the territory of a Member State are allowed insofar as they do not have the equivalent effect of border control. Such an effect is precluded when, inter alia, the checks are carried out on the basis of spot-checks. In Melki, the CJEU found that ‘controls on board an international train or on a toll motorway’ limiting their application to the border region ‘might (…) constitute evidence of the existence of such an equivalent effect’ (para 72). By analogy, the focus on controls at the border area to the systematic manner set out in the directive, could have the equivalent effect of a border check. The lack of any differentiation between flights at risk or not at risk (an approach that was also favoured by the Council Legal Service, Council Document 8850/11) and the fact that member States are left entirely free to determine the extent to which they monitor flights to and from other Member States could enhance the risk of falling into the category of controls with an equivalent effect to border control.

5. Conclusion

The EU PNR Directive is yet another example of how the counter-terrorism rhetoric outweighs serious fundamental rights concerns in the name of ensuring security. The storyline is well-known: after a terrorist attack, numerous ideas – either incorporated in legislative proposals that have stalled or which were ultimately too ambitious and controversial to be presented in the first place – feature on the EU agenda. The EU PNR initiative was buried due to privacy concerns and was brought back from the dead when the circumstances matured. Soon national law enforcement authorities will put their hand into the passengers’ data jar and will deploy their surveillance techniques on an unprecedented and unpredictable scale.

By internalising US standards, the EU puts the privacy of individuals under threat. The new instrument does no longer target third-country nationals only, but also EU citizens, thus marking the end of an era where instruments were used ‘solely’ on foreigners. Undoubtedly, there is a strong ‘momentum’ for justifying mass surveillance practices. In waiting for the ruling on the EU-Canada PNR Agreement, as well as the ruling on Tele2 Sverige (following up on Digital Rights Ireland), one can only hope that the CJEU will uphold its inspiring reasoning and reiterate the important limits placed on deploying surveillance practices, by giving proper weight to the fundamental right to the protection of personal data.

OPINION 1/15: AG MENGOZZI LOOKING FOR A NEW BALANCE IN DATA PROTECTION

ORIGINAL PUBLISHED ON EUROPEAN LAW BLOG (OCTOBER 18, 2016)
By Maxime Lassalle
On 8 September 2016, Advocate General (AG) Mengozzi delivered his much awaited opinion on the agreement between Canada and the European Union on the transfer and processing of Passenger Name Record (PNR). It follows the European Parliament’s resolution seeking an Opinion from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on the compatibility of the agreement with the Treaties. Even though the opinion concludes that the agreement has many loopholes, it could disappoint those who were expecting a strong condemnation of PNR schemes as such.

This blogpost intends to present the context of this procedure and the main elements of the AG’s opinion before analysing them. The question of the appropriate legal basis for the agreement, also raised by the Parliament, will not be addressed. However, before turning to the AG’s opinion, we need to briefly sketch the background of the proposed agreement.

The context

Today, in the absence of a PNR agreement with the EU, Canadian authorities apply their own PNR system unilaterally to air carriers established in the European Union (EU) which provide flights to Canada. This means that air carriers have to transfer PNR data (para. 7 of the AG’s opinion) to the extent that it is collected and contained in their automated reservation systems and departure control systems (para. 19). According to the Commission, the adoption of PNR systems is necessary to balance the legitimacy of the requests for PNR data in the fight against terrorism and the need to protect personal data of EU citizens from abusive access. As a result of the Lisbon Treaty, the adoption of PNR agreements now also requires the consent of the European Parliament (EP) (Article 218(6)(a)(v) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU)), and it is no secret that the EP is quite reluctant to adopt data retention schemes.

For a long time the EP has been requesting the Commission to provide for evidence that PNR schemes are necessary and in particular that the processing of Advance Passenger Information (API) would not be sufficient to reach the same objective of fighting terrorism and serious crime (for example here andhere). API are one of the 19 categories of PNR data and are limited to the identification of the travelers (name, date of birth, gender, citizenship, and travel document data) while PNR data encompass a much broader range of information (food habits, seating information etc.).

Nevertheless, the Commission ignored this request for evidence and proposed in 2013 a Council decision on the conclusion of a PNR agreement with Canada. This proposal was seriously criticized by the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), also questioning the necessity of PNR schemes. Even though in the past, the Parliament had, albeit reluctantly, given its consent to similar PNR agreements (see the EU-US Agreement and the EU-Australia Agreement), this time it persisted and on 25 November 2014 it decided to refer the proposal on the agreement with Canada to the CJEU for it to assess the compatibility of this proposed agreement with the provisions of the TFEU and the Charter. Clearly, this move of the Parliament was inspired by the activism of the CJEU which had proved to be extremely demanding on the protection of personal data in the framework of the fight against terrorism in its famous Digital Rights Ireland case (DRI, commented on this blog).

The AG’s general considerations on PNR schemes

Let us now have a closer look at the (lengthy) opinion of the AG. Before analyzing the agreement, the AG assesses the intrusiveness of the PNR schemes as such, in relation to the right to data protection and the right to privacy. PNR data consist of 19 categories of personal data including data which ‘might provide information concerning, in particular, the health of one or more passengers, their ethnic origin or their religious beliefs’ (para. 169). The processing of these data therefore constitutes an interference which is of a ‘considerable size’ and ‘a not insignificant gravity’ (para. 176). This system is ‘capable of giving the unfortunate impression that all the passengers concerned are transformed into potential suspects’ (para. 176). However, the interference does not reach a level where the essence of the fundamental rights is harmed, because the PNR data do not permit to draw precise conclusions concerning ‘the essence of the private life of the persons concerned’ (para. 186). To justify the interference caused by the processing of PNR data, PNR schemes, should be properly provided for by law, such as an EU agreement adopted by the Council and approved by the EP (paras. 191-192), and meet an objective of general interest, namely the objective of combating terrorism and serious transnational crime (para. 194).

The AG’s general considerations on the standard to be applied to this unprecedented case

Following a classical reasoning on the assessment of the proportionality of the interference (see for example Schwarz, C‑291/12, para. 53), the AG explains that the proposed agreement ‘must also consist of the measures least harmful […] while making an effective contribution to the public security objective pursued by the agreement envisaged’. Provided that there are alternative measures which would be less intrusive, ‘those alternative measures must also be sufficiently effective’ in order to be considered as serious alternatives (para. 208). However, the definition of what is “sufficiently effective” is not given by the previous case law, neither that of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) nor that of the CJEU. For the AG, the effectiveness of these alternative measures must ‘be comparable […] in order to attain the public security objective pursued by that agreement’ (para. 208). This standard of comparability is set by the AG himself. This was not evident as he could also have considered that less effective measures are still sufficiently effective. Requesting comparable effectiveness is a first. Usually in the reasoning, it is easy to decide whether there alternative measures are sufficiently effective or not (see for example Saint-Paul Luxembourg S.A. v. Luxembourg, para. 44). For measures of secret surveillance, it seems more difficult. The comparability criteria may be a way not to address a difficult question.

The AG acknowledges the ability of the interference to achieve the public security objective based on statistics communicated by the United Kingdom Government and the Commission concerning the Canadian authorities’ best practices (para. 205). Between April 2014 and March 2015, thanks to PNR data, 9,500 targets were identified, among them 1,765 persons were subjected to more thorough checks and 178 were arrested for a serious transnational criminal offence, connected in particular with drug trafficking (para. 262). However, the AG does not take into account that the statistics which were presented to the Court do not indicate the amount of data which was necessary to identify these targets. Moreover, one could note that according to the statistics no terrorist was identified, which is quite surprising for a scheme whose main purpose is precisely to identify people related to terrorism. The AG was obviously satisfied with the fact that PNR schemes are effective against organized crime.

The AG goes on addressing the specificity of PNR schemes, namely that it is their very nature to be based on profiling methods, by a comparison of the PNR data with scenarios or predetermined assessment criteria and that PNR data processing can lead to ‘false positive “targets” being identified’ (para. 255). This specificity of PNR schemes, which have never been assessed by the CJEU, made it necessary for the AG to detail the conditions under which PNR schemes could be considered as proportionate. In order to do so, he suggests to adapt a standard used by the ECtHR in Zakharov v. Russia, namely the standard of ‘reasonable suspicion’. For the AG, these procedures should manage to target ‘individuals who might be under a ‘reasonable suspicion’ of participating in terrorism or serious transnational crime’ (para. 256). The application of this standard is ambitious. Indeed, Judge Pinto de Albuquerque, in his dissenting opinion in Szabò and Vissy v. Hungary, had feared that this standard would be replaced by an ‘individual suspicion’, a lower standard, for surveillance measures whose purpose is to fight terrorism. However, this standard is used to limit the access to personal data by law enforcement authorities (an idea also present in the DRI case, para. 60-62). And yet the purpose of PNR schemes is not to create a pool of information available under strict conditions to law enforcement authorities, but to allow the Canadian competent authority, namely the Canada Border Services Agency, to use data mining procedures in order to discover new persons who were not previously suspected. Hence, the application of the standard of the ‘reasonable suspicion’ seems impossible as such: the limitation of the access to the data is not compatible with the idea, accepted by the AG, that PNR schemes need to process all the data that are available. The AG nevertheless tries to adapt the standard by proposing three principles.

The first principle is that the assessment criteria used to analyse the PNR data should not ‘be based on an individual’s racial or ethnic origin, his political opinions, his religion or philosophical beliefs, his membership of a trade union, his health or his sexual orientation’ (para. 258). The AG obviously fears discriminatory measures based on the processing of PNR data. The second principle, which is in line with the new principles proposed by Directive 2016/680 (i.e., the new Directive on data protection for police and criminal justice sector) is that the result of the automatic processing of data must be examined by non-automatic means (para. 259). The third principle is that the functioning of the automatic means should be checked regularly by an independent public authority (para. 259).

The AG’s proportionality test

After these general considerations, the AG starts his proportionality test. In the opinion nine points are considered separately (para. 210). From this analysis, three main elements deserve to be emphasized.

The first important point is that the AG accepts PNR schemes as a matter of principles. He considers that, excluding sensitive data, all categories of PNR data are considered relevant for the purpose of the envisaged agreement. Sensitive data are defined in Article 2 (e) of the envisaged agreement as ‘information that reveals racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade-union membership, or information about a person’s health or sex life’. The processing of sensitive data is allowed by the envisaged agreement but, for the AG, this is not acceptable as it creates a risk of stigmatization (para. 222). What is more, the fact that these data are excluded from the PNR agreement with Australia shows that the transfer of sensitive data is not necessary to pursue the objective of the scheme (para. 222). This appreciation of the AG is a direct consequence of the first of the three principles he established.

Still on the categories of data, the opinion brushes away the criticism of both the EP and the Article 29 data protection Working Party requesting evidence that the transfer of less data, for example only of API, is not sufficient to meet the objective of the proposed agreement. According to the AG, ‘data of that type does not reveal information about the booking methods, payment methods used and travel habits, the cross-checking of which can be useful for the purposes of combating terrorism and other serious transnational criminal activities. Independently of the methods used to process that data, the API data […] are therefore not sufficient to attain with comparable effectiveness the public security objective pursued by the agreement envisaged’ (para. 214).

Even though all these data are transferred to the Canadian authority irrespective of any indication that the persons concerned may have a connection with terrorism or serious transnational crime (para. 215), the purpose of PNR schemes is to identify persons who were ‘not known to the law enforcement services who may nonetheless present an ‘interest’ or a risk to public security’ (para. 216). For the AG, bulk transfers of data are then necessary. However, he considers the definition of certain categories of data as too vague. For example, heading 17 of the annex, on ‘general remarks’, covers all ‘supplementary information apart from that listed elsewhere in the annex to the agreement envisaged’ (para. 217). Consequently, it is likely that air carriers will transfer all the data that they own, and not only the data that are necessary for Canadian authorities (para. 220).

In addition, the AG’s opinion considers that the scope ratione personae of the agreement envisaged is not too broad and that the massive and indiscriminate transfer of personal data is necessary. If, in theory, it could be possible to imagine a PNR data transfer system which distinguishes passengers according to specific criteria, these systems would never be as effective as PNR data schemes in combating terrorism and serious transnational crime (para. 243). The AG also underlines that consumers of commercial flights voluntarily use a mode of transportation ‘which is itself, repeatedly, unfortunately, a vehicle or a victim of terrorism or serious transnational crime, which requires the adoption of measures ensuring a high level of security for all passengers’ (para. 242).

These first considerations are very important as they show that in principle, for the AG, massive transfer and processing of PNR data is not disproportionate as such. If the undifferentiated and general nature of the retention of the data of any person using electronic communications in the Union was one of the main reasons why Directive 2006/24/EC was considered as going beyond what was strictly necessary (para. 59 of the DRI case), such data retention schemes are possible as long as they respect strict conditions (see the opinion of AG Saugmandsgaard Øe on the joined cases Tele2 Sverige AB and Secretary of State for the Home Department, commented on this blog). The fact that AG Mengozzi accepts the principle of large scale transfer of PNR data is thus not so surprising.

Once this step was made and given the specificity of the case, he needed to create specific conditions under which PNR schemes are proportionate. In addition to the loopholes already explained, these conditions are further elaborated in the two remaining important points of the opinion.

The second important point is that the agreement envisaged should justify the duration of data retention. The AG regrets that the agreement envisaged ‘does not indicate the objective reasons that led the contracting parties to increase the PNR data retention period to a maximum of five years’ (para. 279). He adds that such a long period of retention of the data exceeds what is necessary, particularly because all the data are retained for the same duration (para. 284) and because the masking procedure is incomplete and does not fully ensure the depersonalization of the data (para. 287).

This point is significant as this is the only element in the AG’s opinion which is very critical of PNR schemes in general and which puts the PNR directive at risk. This question was also a key issue in the DRI case. In Directive 2006/24/EC the data retention period of a maximum of two years without distinguishing categories of data on the basis of their usefulness was not based on objective criteria and was therefore excessive (para. 64 of the DRI case). This threatens the validity of the PNR Directive. Indeed, Article 12 (1) of this Directive provides for a duration of five years, without distinguishing categories of data and explaining the reasons for such a long retention. Noticeably, its depersonalisation procedure seems more in line with the assessment of the AG, particularly because more data elements are masked (Article 12 (2) of the Directive, para. 287 of the AG opinion).

The last important point relates to the serious doubt of the AG concerning the level of protection granted by Canada. The opinion is indeed the most critical when it comes to the international nature of the agreement. This is not that surprising given that the Court recently adopted a very demanding position on bulk transfers of data to third countries (in the case Schrems, commented on this blog here). The AG acknowledges that the Court ‘cannot express a view on the legislation or the practice of a third country’ (para. 163). However, the terms of the agreement themselves should have been formulated in such a way that no discretion would be left to Canadian authorities as for the applicable level of protection (para. 164).

For the AG, the access to the data and the use of the transferred data by Canadian authorities is not sufficiently regulated in the envisaged agreement. It leaves to Canada the entire discretion to determine what officials and what competent authorities are allowed to access the data (paras. 250 and 267). Similarly, the envisaged agreement does not stick to a strict principle of purpose limitation as the processing of PNR data is not strictly limited to the fight against terrorism and serious crime (paras 236-237). This is aggravated by the fact that the offences which belong to the categories of terrorism and serious crime are not exhaustively listed (para. 235). Concerning the use of the data, the AG considers that the possibilities of disclosure and subsequent transfer of the PNR data is not sufficiently framed. Indeed, Articles 18 and 19 of the agreement envisaged allow the disclosure and subsequent transfer of the PNR data to other government authorities in Canada and could be used to circumvent the level of protection afforded in the EU (para. 296). As a matter of fact, no independent authority or judge would check the appreciation of the Canadian competent authority that the authority to which the data are transferred can afford an equivalent level of protection (para. 300). The AG concludes that all these points need to be more detailed in the agreement in order to make sure that the level of protection of data ensured in Canada is equivalent to the level of protection ensured in the European Union. Following the previous case law of the Court, particularly the DRI case, the level of protection ensured in the EU is quite demanding and the respect of same level of protection has to be ensured before transferring personal data to third countries (see in particular para. 96 in Schrems).

Finally, the AG points out that the mechanism for detection and review of any violations of the rules of the agreement envisaged affording protection of passengers’ privacy and personal data is not effective because it does not belong to a fully independent and impartial supervisory authority (para. 315). This last point reminds the Commission that the mechanisms of control in the third country must be insured by a sufficiently independent body. This reminder is interesting as the new ‘privacy shield’ replacing the safe harbor is criticized for providing a right to review only through an ombudsman whose independence and powers are questionable.

Some comments

In his reasoning, the AG addresses issues linked to the very nature of PNR schemes and the solutions he proposes do not threaten the principle of PNR schemes. Even though this opinion could seem at first disappointing for those who were expecting the AG to condemn PNR schemes, it appears that this ‘implicit acceptance’ of PNR schemes follows the general principles created by the Court but simply innovates and addresses the new issues that had not been addressed so far with more consideration for the necessity to provide for effective tools to fight terrorism and serious crime.

Even though a lot of questions had to be addressed by the AG, there is one which is of paramount importance. Ever since its DRI case, the Court has developed a strong focus on the guarantees concerning the access to personal data by law enforcement authorities and the AG had to adapt the requirements of the Court to PNR schemes. The attempt of the AG to adapt the standard of the ‘reasonable suspicion’ shows that the applicability of guarantees to law enforcement authorities’ access to data from different data retention schemes is a question which would deserve more attention. Generally speaking, the ECtHR considers that to assess the existence of a reasonable suspicion, it is necessary to check ‘whether there are factual indications for suspecting that person of planning, committing or having committed criminal acts or other acts that may give rise to secret surveillance measures, such as, for example, acts endangering national security’ (para. 260 of the case Zakharov v. Russia). The problem with PNR schemes is that the suspicion is not prior to the collection and processing of PNR data but discovered as a result of this collection and processing.

This question differs from the ones the Court has previously addressed in its case law, in particular in the DRI case. However, such an issue also exists in other areas. For instance, based on the European system of prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing, financial institutions have to monitor the transactions of all their clients and have the duty to report suspicious transactions. The control of suspicious transactions by these financial institutions also relies on mechanisms of data mining. The processing of personal data is made by private parties, namely financial institutions. Law enforcement authorities can in theory only obtain these data once financial institutions have reported a suspicion (this is, however, something that the Commission would like to change in order to facilitate the access to the data for the Financial Intelligence Units, see its proposal). Consequently, only the financial institutions, which collect anyways these data for the purpose of their economic activities and are subjected to the data protection framework provided for by Directive 95/46/EC, can access these data. This appears to be a safeguard against abusive access from law enforcement authorities. As a matter of fact, when law enforcement authorities access the personal data, after a report from a financial institution, there is already a degree of suspicion. This is probably more in line with the standard of ‘reasonable suspicion’. However, in this field, too, there is a massive collection of personal data which are analysed mainly through data mining procedures in order to discover suspicious transactions.

For PNR data, according to the agreement with Canada as well as for the new PNR Directive, air carriers companies do not have to analyse the data by themselves, but have to transfer all the data respectively to the Canada Border Services Agency or to the new ‘Passenger Information Units’ which will analyse all these data, through data mining procedures. From this data processing suspicions will then emerge which will be further analysed by law enforcement authorities.

Those two examples show that personal data are not only used a posteriori, once criminal investigations are open when a suspicion already exists but are also used for data mining processes with the purpose of discovering new suspicions. It might be that there is a difference based on whether private parties or public authorities are in charge of the data mining procedures. However, in both cases there is no previous ‘reasonable suspicion’; suspicions emerge following a massive monitoring of personal data.

At the end of the day, once the principle of massive surveillance schemes based on data mining mechanisms is considered to be acceptable as such, the standard of the ‘reasonable suspicion’ is overrun and has to be replaced by principles and other guarantees preventing any abuse, provided that this is possible. Are the three principles proposed by the AG sufficient? Hopefully the Court will address this key issue in a clear and detailed way.

Continue reading “OPINION 1/15: AG MENGOZZI LOOKING FOR A NEW BALANCE IN DATA PROTECTION”

Establishing the European Border and Coast Guard: all-new or Frontex reloaded?

ORIGINAL PUBLISHED ON EU LAW ANALYSIS (NB emphasis are added)

by Herbert Rosenfeldt, (Research Assistant and PhD candidate, University of Passau)

Introduction

Attending a birthday party at a remote checkpoint at the Bulgarian external border with Turkey does not sound like fun. Unless you are the adventurous type, you would probably hesitate to join in if it was not for someone special. Indeed, last Thursday high ranking EU and Member States’ officials visited Bulgaria’s Kapitan Andreevo Border Checkpoint to inaugurate the new European Border and Coast Guard Agency a.k.a. Frontex.

This is so far the most visible sign of the coming into force of the European Border and Coast Guard Regulation on the same day. Not lacking pathos or high expectations (Donald Tusk: “To save Schengen, we must regain control of our external borders. A new European Border and Coast Guard Agency is being created”), the new EBCG seeks to reinforce external border control against the background of last year’s migratory pressure put on the southern and south-eastern EU Member States with external Schengen borders. According to EU officials’ analyses, national border guards had been unable or unwilling to “protect” the Schengen area effectively by stopping the influx of irregular migrants. Frontex, on the other hand, was held to have been too ill-equipped in terms of powers, personnel and equipment to render sufficient support or remedy the situation. There is a simple, perhaps simplistic, rationale behind the new EBCG – one that gathered broad consensus among Member States and EU institutions resulting in a fast track legislative procedure of less than a year. The stronger EU external border control, the less permeable borders are for migrants; the smaller the number of migrants arriving, the smaller the problems within the Schengen area. Those problems comprise allocating asylum seekers and processing their claims, providing food and shelter, or safeguarding internal security and freedom of movement. The focus on external borders has been accurately criticised, inter alia, here and here.

Is the new EBCG truly a “milestone in the history of European border management”, as suggested by birthday guests but contested by others? Is the new agency something special at all? Hence is it worth joining the congratulants (if belatedly)? What birthday wishes should be made? Surely only time and further in-depth analysis can tell. Steve’s earlier post here gave the broader picture of last year’s legislative proposals on border control and migration. For now, and after two preliminary thoughts, I would like firstly to make some observations on the changing concept of EU external border management. Secondly, I highlight some institutional changes. Thirdly and fourthly, I will focus on two much debated novelties in external border control: emergency interventions and the complaints mechanism in the context of Fundamental Rights accountability.

Towards Securitisation

The drafters of the new regulation were discernibly concerned by the loss of control at Europe’s southern and south-eastern borders. Adapting to the ongoing political discourse, the wording of the Regulation (Article 1, see also Articles 4 and 15) gives top priority to regaining and keeping control of the migration situation and to efficient border management. Migration challenges and potential future threats are mentioned in succession, followed by serious cross-border crimes. The aim to be achieved is a high level of internal security within the Union while safeguarding the free movement of persons within it. In a subtle way, this almost equates migratory pressure through irregular migration with potential threats to internal security and cross-border crime. In further construing Article 1 of the Regulation, it appears that affording international protection and protecting human rights are clearly no objectives of European border management. Rather, they are perceived as restrictions to securing EU borders.

Another feature of this security-orientated approach is new migration management support teams to be deployed in hotspot areas (Article 18). Support in processing asylum claims and returning third country nationals does not help to protect the Schengen area from migrants at first sight. However, if it is done rapidly in hotspot areas, migrants are effectively not entering the Schengen area, hence apparently more security. Along the same line of reasoning, increased capacities to support return operations (Article 18, 28 et seq.) reflect political demand for enforcing third country nationals’ returns.

Legal instruments rearranged

The law of EU external border control is no role model for legal clarity and certainty. Legal acts such as the Frontex Regulation have frequently been amended, and they are intertwined with various other EU legal acts. The new Regulation at least partly smoothes this scattered landscape by merging the Frontex Regulation and the Regulation on Rapid Border Intervention Teams into one. Furthermore, the Schengen Borders Code has been amended (see below). Although based on the same EU competence (Article 77 (2) (d) TFEU), applied at the external Schengen borders and closely related to the work of Frontex and the national external border guards, Regulations on EUROSUR and surveillance of the external sea borders remained untouched. Hence the legislator missed the opportunity to create a single comprehensible piece of legislation apart from the SBC, the latter covering other subject matters such as entry conditions of third country nationals and internal border controls anyway.

New concept of external border controls

Before, States with external Schengen borders were exclusively tasked with policing those borders. Under the Frontex Regulation, border control fell into the sole competence of the Member States. Frontex’s main task then was to render border control more effective by coordinating Member States’ joint activities and providing surveillance data, technical support and expertise. The common conceptual framework informing border controls, called “integrated management system for external borders” (now Article 77 (1) (c) TFEU), only featured in strategy papers and policy recommendations of the Commission and the Council such as the non-binding Updated Schengen Catalogue 2009.

The new EBCG consists of the EBCG Agency and the national border and coast guards. Although Member States retain primary responsibility for border management, there is a clear shift towards responsibility shared with the Agency (Article 5 of the Regulation). On scrutiny, the new system arranges the Agency and the Member States in a hierarchical order. It is the Agency’s task to establish a technical and operational strategy for integrated border management. All national strategies will have to comply with it. Although co-operation outside the Agency’s remit remains possible, this is limited to action compatible with the Agency’s activities. Therefore, there is not just well-known supremacy of EU law at work in this area of shared competences, but supremacy of the Agency’s strategies, broadly phrased tasks and objectives. On paper (see the eighth and eleventh recitals), the political development of integrated border management is left to the EU organs, whereas technical and operational aspects will be clarified by the Agency. The dividing line is of course far from clear. As a result, the Agency will almost inevitably assume a more proactive role.

In my view, shared responsibility serves as a chiffre to justify taking away Member States’ discretionary powers in border control. In practice, the Agency gains greater impact and tools of supervision and coercion, as will be seen below. Still, the new Regulation has to be given credit for legally defining components of European integrated border management for the first time ever.

Institutional changes

In short, Frontex becomes … erm … Frontex! Despite last week’s “all-new” rhetoric, little will change in the constitutional setting of the Agency. As a decentralised (i.e. regulatory) agency it remains an independent EU body with legal personality. Its headquarters will remain in Warsaw. The Agency’s official name, which nobody used before, changes to a shorter name, which probably nobody will use going forwards – and that is alright because it reflects that the Agency is not founded anew but continues all its activities, albeit with expanded tasks and more resources.

To this end, the Agency’s staff grows from 309 in 2015 to 1,000 in 2020. The number of Member States’ border guards deployed in EBCG teams remain subject to annual bilateral negotiations. At the same time, a rapid reaction pool of 1,500 European border guards as a standing corps operational within 5 days has been inscribed in the Regulation. The Agency continues to maintain a technical equipment pool composed of equipment owned by either the Agency itself or by the Member States. With an increase in budget to more than twice the amount of 2015 (€143.3 to €322 million in 2020), the Agency might actually start acquiring equipment on its own in the future.

Of the Agency’s tasks (see the long list in Article 8 (1) of the Regulation), most have been assigned to Frontex before. Characteristic of the new supervisory role are vulnerability assessments carried out by the Agency to evaluate the capability and readiness of Member States’ border guard to act in emergencies. The assessment might lead to binding recommendations by the Executive Director. To disregard them can eventually result in a situation requiring urgent action as described further below. Moreover, Frontex shall deploy liaison officers in the Member States monitoring and reporting on national external border management. It is true that command and control in EBCG operations remains with the host Member State. However, from now on, the host Member State has not only to consider the Frontex coordinating officer’s views, but also to follow them as far as possible.

Another noteworthy development concerns the Agency’s support rendered to Member States coping with migratory pressure at so-called hotspots. The existing provisions on hotspots in EU Decisions on relocation of asylum-seekers have been codified in Article 18 of the Regulation, which now assigns a supportive role to Frontex in migration management. This includes screening, registering and providing information to third country nationals on their right to apply for international protection. It further includes facilitating their return right from the hotspot area.

One might argue that the European Asylum Support Office is better placed to do all that. However, in my opinion the crucial question is to what extent any EU agency involved influences or determines the Member States’ decisions on entry, to afford international protection or to return migrants. Such executive powers have not been granted to EU institutions and therefore – at least by law – they remain firmly within the Member States’ jurisdiction. The provisions provide for tailor-made support teams coordinated by all relevant Union agencies under the auspices of the Commission. Thus, the new Regulation acknowledges the role of agencies and the significance of hotspots without clarifying much. It remains to be seen how the agencies will delineate their respective contributions. If you have always been looking for a legal definition of hotspot area, at least you will find one in the new Regulation (Article 2 (10)).

Situations requiring urgent action – right to intervene?

How to deal with emergency situations at the external borders of Member States unwilling to act – that was the only matter of serious contention during the legislative process. In normal operation and as before, a Member State at first formally requests the Agency’s support and the launch of EBCG operations (Articles 14 (1), 15 (1) and (2), 18 (1) et al). At the second stage, the Member State and the Executive Director agree on the operational plan (Article 16 (2)). Lastly, the host Member State itself retains command for the whole operation (Article 21 (1)). The Commission proposal for the Regulation challenged those safeguards for the Member States’ sovereign right to border protection. The Commission envisaged itself initiating emergency interventions conducted by the Agency and supported by the Member State concerned. Boldly, this was labelled the Agency’s “right to intervene”. Understandably, it stirred criticism among Member States.

The subsequent trilogue put things in order again: Now it is an implementing act of the Council (proposed by the Commission) which substitutes the Member State’s request at the first stage if (a) the State did not follow the recommendations resulting from vulnerability assessments or (b) it faces specific and disproportionate challenges at his external borders without requesting or supporting joint EBCG operations (Article 19 (1)). The implementing act of the Council authorises the Agency to take various measures. It is binding upon the Member State. In turn, it becomes evident that the Member State’s formal request in accordance with the normal procedure might no longer be as voluntary as the wording suggests. Because if joint European action is deemed necessary, there is always the possibility that an emergency intervention will eventually be initiated.

Yet, at the second stage, the Member State still has to agree on the operational plan submitted by the Agency (Article 19 (5)). This might be interpreted as linking emergency interventions to the Member State’s consent after all. However, in the light of the purpose of emergency interventions, I submit that the duty to fully comply with the Council decision and to this end cooperate with the Agency entails the duty to consent to the operational plan. Otherwise, it would always be possible for reluctant Member States to impede the whole procedure depriving it of much of its force.

For the implementation of the measures prescribed by the Council, the Member State concerned still acts as host state. As a consequence, that State retains command and control of the operations and can be held liable as in normal operations. It can be questioned whether an unwilling State should be forced to lead a joint operation in times of emergency. At the same time, however, it is most likely that different entities will be engaged in the process. The decision not to conduct operations or to request assistance is often taken at a high political level, whereas operational command is exercised within the national border guard authorities.

Lastly, Article 19 (10) most remarkably links the Member State’s non-compliance with the Council decision and failure to cooperate with the Agency to prospective national measures taken within the Schengen area. According to newly amended Article 29 of the Schengen Borders Code, the Council upon proposal by the Commission may recommend to Member States the reintroduction of controls at their internal borders if the Member State’s behaviour (a) puts the functioning of the area without internal borders at risk, and (b) leads to a serious threat to public policy or internal security. This mechanism can be triggered only 30 days after the Council takes its (urgent?!) decision. As a result, Member States that do not – for whatever reason – cooperate at their external borders in emergencies can de facto be temporarily excluded from the area of free movement. The much-stressed concept of solidarity (Article 80 TFEU) hence turns into its evil twin: showing solidarity means complying with the EBCG activities à la EU. It becomes the prerogative of the EU institutions to determine who is in solidarity, and the lack thereof entails serious consequences.

In sum, the new Regulation establishes a legal obligation to cooperate in situations requiring urgent action of the Member State concerned. If the State does not comply, there is no way to enforce this duty or to deploy EBCG teams on his territory against his will. The only sanction seems to urge other Member States to close their internal borders instead.

Human Rights complaints mechanism and accountability

When Frontex was established in 2004, the Fundamental Rights (FR) implications of its work had been completely overlooked. The founding Regulation did not contain any specific references to FR. Over the following years through a piecemeal approach, largely affirmative and declaratory FR obligations found their way into the Regulation. More importantly, Frontex drew up an FR strategy (followed by an action plan) in 2011. At the same time, a consultative forum and an FR officer were established to give advice on FR matters and strengthen FR compliance. With the new Regulation, there are minor improvements on the human rights record. Article 1 now mentions FR, they form part of compulsory reporting and evaluation schemes as set out in the operational plan, and there is a single comprehensive provision spelling out FR obligations (Article 34).

The Regulation finally introduces a FR complaints mechanism (Article 72, discussed here) as demanded by European Parliament, EU Ombudsman and Council of Europe since 2013. Any person directly affected by actions of staff during EBCG operations can file a complaint about FR violations with the FR officer. The FR officer is responsible for setting up the complaints mechanism, administering complaints and deciding on their admissibility. He or she then directs them to either the Executive Director or the competent national authority for them to decide on the merits and an appropriate follow-up. The FR officer then again monitors this decision as well as the follow-up.

In my view, the effectiveness of the mechanism depends on two preconditions. Firstly, the FR officer’s resources should increase significantly to stem the Herculean tasks ahead of him. Secondly, his institutional independency within the Agency has to be reinforced, bearing in mind that he is a member of staff and dependent on good working relationships with other members of staff. Several open questions remain. For example, the provision leaves open how the FR officer will enforce the appropriate follow-up by the Agency or the Member States. It does not make clear that the complaints mechanism does not affect other remedies, nor does it foresee an appeals procedure with an independent body. The FR officer and ultimately the Executive Director or the Member States authorities will have to answer difficult legal questions on who is “directly affected” by an action and who is responsible for it (see below). For the development of the law, it would have been better if a court or tribunal had had subsequent jurisdiction. So far, actions for annulment or damages (Articles 263, 268 TFEU) have not generated any EU case law regarding Frontex, and except for its judgment in Hirsi Jamaa, the ECtHR was not able to fill the gap neither.

“The extended tasks and competence of the Agency”, the 14th recital of the Regulation reads, “should be balanced with strengthened fundamental rights safeguards and increased accountability”. But does the new Agency live up to the claim? Apart from the complaints mechanism, the FR framework largely stays the same, and so does the general liability framework: The home Member State takes disciplinary action whereas the domestic laws of the host Member State determine criminal liability. It is also the host Member State incurring civil liability for the EBCG teams. The Agency itself incurs non-contractual liability according to the general principles of EU law (Article 340 (2) TFEU). There are no provisions determining which acts or effects of external border control are attributed to the Agency or to the Member States involved (a problem of multi-actor scenarios, where the 2011 ILC Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations might be of help). Following recent revelations on the frequent use of firearms in joint operations, MEPs wrote to Executive Director Fabrice Leggeri asking for more information and general guidance on responsibilities in certain operational scenarios. The ignorance displayed by Frontex’s designated watchdogs (see Article 7 of the Regulation) is further evidence for the need of more transparency and legal clarity in this regard.

Outlook

On the 6th of October 2016 the landscape of EU external border control did not change dramatically, but it did change. To repeat: No new agency has been founded, no EBCG under EU command and control was established, no right to intervene at Member States’ external borders against their will has been introduced. In fact and most notably, the Member States’ external border guard is placed under increased scrutiny of the EBCG Agency. Failure to comply with integrated border management standards could eventually lead to reintroducing internal border controls to the detriment of the disobedient Member State. At the same time, the Agency’s enhanced tasks and powers will go hand in hand with more responsibility and accountability, but the latter has yet to be improved. Although the complaints mechanism is a step in the right direction, its design could have been more effective. This holds true especially for the follow-up mechanism. In practice, much will depend on the Fundamental Rights officer’s assertiveness on the one hand, and the Executive Director’s responsiveness on the other hand.

After all, the distinguished guests to the celebrations at Kapitan Andreevo Border Checkpoint last week did not witness birth or rebirth, but rather Frontex’s coming of age both in terms of leverage and responsibilities. Frontex, I wish you well indeed.

Dublin ‘reloaded’ or time for ambitious pragmatism?

ORIGINAL PUBLISHED ON OMNIA WEBSITE (12/10/16)

by Marcello Di Filippo,
Associate Professor of International Law and Coordinator of the Observatory on European Migration Law, University of Pisa (Italy)

(Click here  to hear Francesco Maiani’s (Swiss Member of the Odysseus Network) intervention at the LIBE Committee of the European Parliament on this issue – 4:10 – 22:20)

While the largely failed relocation scheme of 2015 is still in force, the European Commission has put forward a proposal for revising the Dublin III Regulation. Since comments have already been made in the blogosphere (see Hruschka on this blog and Gauci) and a comprehensive study on the need to reform the system has been recently released by a member of the Odysseus Network and presented to the LIBE Committee of the European Parliament (see Maiani), this entry will not provide a general description of the proposal and focus instead on some selected aspects by putting forward some proposals to make the Dublin system less dysfunctional.

A plea against taboos and ‘conservative’ options

Many EU documents repeatedly underline that the Dublin system is a “cornerstone” of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). Indeed, taking into consideration Article 78(2) TFEU, there is a need to organise the distribution of responsibilities  since the competence for assessing claims and the  provision of protection lie with Member States.  Despite this, we should not let Dublin become a taboo, impermeable to discussions on its past and current contents. If the so-called ‘cornerstone’ is ill-conceived, the overall structure of the CEAS becomes unstable, unfair and ineffective.

Drawing from private international law terminology, we can say that the main objective of Dublin is to prevent positive and (most commonly) negative conflicts of jurisdiction, by rapidly determining a single responsible Member State (MS). Decades of legal thinking and state practice show that any set of rules (both domestic or international) allocating jurisdiction should be based on rational criteria and on a reasonable degree of connection (i.e. genuine link) between the competent State and the situation at stake. Although due consideration must be given to the fact that “asylum jurisdiction” is a peculiar field of law and that the interests at stake are specific to this area, decision makers must take into account the principles of rationality, fairness and compliance.

More than twenty years of implementation of the Dublin system (see Guild and others, Hruschka and Maiani) showed that, as currently framed, Dublin simply does not work, both in normal periods and in times of crisis. Among other things, the fact that no reasonable room is given to consider asylum seekers’ preferences or their prospects for integration creates an evident trend against spontaneous compliance and towards secondary movements.

The deficient system generates high costs of different natures, such as:

(a) waste of public money in repressive actions and in administrative as well as judicial procedures not producing durable results;

(b) diplomatic tensions between Member States;

(c) profit-making for criminal networks providing smuggling services;

(d) social exclusion and frustration for asylum-seekers (potentially leading to human rights violations or various forms of criminality);

(e) lack of integration, with increased costs for social services and public expenditure.

Against this background, a fresh and innovative approach was expected when the EU institutions finally recognised in 2015 the need for a general overhaul of the Dublin III Regulation. However, the proposal that is now on the table does not envisage an overall reframing of the system, but a rather modest introduction of several corrections (some more significant than others) to a bad architecture that is not fundamentally questioned.

The criterion of the “Country of first entry” or “the irrational rationale”

The first point of the proposal deserving severe critique regards the way in which the Commission treats the allocation criteria and, in particular, the insistence on the questionable criterion of the country of first entry. The explanatory memorandum of the proposal underlines that, according to some MS, the criterion of first entry must be preserved and that alternative connecting factors (such as personal preferences) would add confusion and give the wrong signal that asylum seekers can choose their country of final destination. In the meantime, it is acknowledged that other MSs and relevant stakeholders (for instance UNHCR, para. 6, at 7;  specialised NGOs such as ECRE and others) called for a different vision, focusing on the preferences or characteristics of asylum seekers (in  view of their speedy and satisfactory integration).

Yet, the explanatory memorandum merges the personal preferences and the characteristics of asylum seekers in the same concept, and uses the same rationale to discard both the ‘free choice’ approach and the ‘personal characteristics’ approach. To make my point clear, merely subjective preferences are different than objective personal characteristics (liable to increase prospects of integration in the host MS): while the ‘free choice’ approach may be swiftly questioned as a solution for allocating people (although it should not be summarily discarded, as recently advocated by Maiani, at 46-48), the verification of a reasonable connection with a country is a totally different issue. Even more surprisingly, the Commission seems to ignore the indications from other parts of EU secondary law. For instance, Recital No. 34 of Decision No. 2015/1601 (establishing provisional measures in the area of international protection for the benefit of Italy and Greece) clearly states that:

“The integration of applicants in clear need of international protection into the host society is the cornerstone [sic] of a properly functioning CEAS”.

Following the same logic, the provision on the safe third country concept (defined in the Asylum Procedures Directive) underlines that the latter may be applied only if due regard is given to the existence of “a connection between the applicant and the third country concerned on the basis of which it would be reasonable for that person to go to that country” [Article 38(2)(a)].

This being said, let us try to follow the reasoning of the Commission. What is the rationale behind the first country of entry criterion? Commentators agree on the fact that the drafters of the Dublin Convention and of the subsequent Dublin II and III Regulations intended to establish a linkage between the allocation of responsibility in the field of asylum and the respect of MS obligations in the protection of the EU external borders (as confirmed by the same communicationof April 2016, at 7). Put in another way, if a MS  lets an asylum seeker enter its territory, then it would be logical (sic!) to establish responsibility for assessing the asylum claim and, if the outcome is positive, to define that MS as the new place of residence for the beneficiary of international protection.

However, it is well known that the principle of non-refoulement is applicable on entry regardless of the efficiency of checks at the external borders. Likewise, the combined effect of current EU visa policy, EU carrier sanctions regimes and the nature of flows to Europe unavoidably overburdens frontline States (the number and identity of which may change in time). Thus, we can question whether the above mentioned rationale is…. rational! Or whether it is in line with the principle of solidarity and fair sharing of responsibility recognised in Article 80 TFEU. Would it perhaps sound malicious to advance the idea that this criterion and especially its continued maintenance are simply the result of the (undeclared) will of some MS to put the responsibility and the related burden of international protection on other MS?

A “genuine link” approach: not a panacea, but surely deserving of further enquiry

With the aim to be constructive, this article puts forward another approach for giving more weight to objective links between an asylum seeker and a given MS, which would favour his or her speedy and efficient integration. A series of objectively verifiable elements connecting an applicant with a certain MS can be proposed in order to establish the relevant jurisdiction, according to a ‘genuine link’ approach (see also here for further elaboration on this methodological proposal and on its potential benefits both for MSs and asylum seekers):

  • Wider family links: The Commission proposes to broaden the scope of ‘family members’ so as to include siblings, which is a positive step. In additional to that, taking into account the presence of relatives in a MS deserves a more careful consideration. In many countries of origin, relatives are as important in family life as core family members, due to the cultural concept of family and related moral obligations of mutual assistance and care. Besides, in occasions where the original nuclear family may be dispersed or deceased, the only form of family life available to the asylum seeker may be represented by a cousin, an aunt, a nephew or a grandparent. It is clear that this widened concept of family might be seen as “too generous” by MS, but considering wider family links for Dublin purposes should be at least further discussed. Some categories of relatives could also be included in the alternative criteria of verified sponsors (see below);
  • Language skills: Some States whose official language is widely spoken outside of Europe (for instance, English or French) might fear to be penalised by this criterion. Nevertheless, it could pragmatically work even for indicating a MS where the population in general and civil servants in particular are usually fluent with a second language (for instance, English in some northern European countries). In any case, a saving clause would apply in case of numbers exceeding a reasonable quota (see below);
  • Previous study or work experience in a given MS, or other forms of regular stay: If compared with the lack of any relevant “contact” with a national community, a previous regular residence is usually able to create a potential for integration (unless it is ascertained that during that stay anti-social behaviour occurred);
  • Verified private sponsorship: Apart from relatives, private individuals – be they EU nationals or third country nationals (TCN) regularly residing in the EU – may have a strong and verifiable personal link to an asylum seeker. In a globalised world, with plenty of transnational activities and personal mobility, a person may act as a sponsor for a TCN, for instance due to previous professional or personal exchange developed during a stay in Europe or in third countries. A similar reasoning might apply to non-profit organisations or firms, subject to some eligibility criteria. In the different setting of legal avenues to reach the EU, the Fundamental Rights Agency recently argued that private sponsorship is one of the most promising and under-exploited means (see here, at 6). Similarly, the Commission showed an interesting openness towards such an option (see theCommunication of April 2016, at 15-16). This possibility may cause some concern about possible risk of abuse, false declarations or coverage of illicit smuggling networks, but it should at least be the object of a serious and open minded discussion.
  • Existing legal tools facilitating the recognition of professional qualifications: The network of bilateral treaties already in force between MS and third countries of origin requires proper evaluation, because this could offer pragmatic solutions where the then protected person could easily play the role of an economic actor, instead of depending on social assistance.

One may question which of these factors is more suitable and which pre-requisites should be established to put them in place, but new paradigms need to be seriously explored in order to alter the current overall unsatisfactory performance of Dublin.

In the same vein, the quantitative impact of the proposed approach might be doubted. It must be acknowledged that no precise data are available and that no serious estimate may be done as to the impact of this proposal. Nevertheless, it is very likely that a large number of secondary movements is motivated by the intention to reach a country where some connections exist, so there is an evident normative need to set this empirical phenomena into a more credible legislative framework. The alternatives are to turn a blind eye (with no solution to the current problems to be expected) or to increase the sanctions regime for asylum seekers not complying with the current rules (a scenario that is even more debatable and problematic in the perspective of fundamental rights of asylum seekers: see  the post of Hruschka and the in-depth study of Maiani). By applying this new approach, some MS that are already under strain might become the responsible MS. To avoid undesired side effects, a saving clause might be connected to the overall system (see below).

Filters and corrections: the strange idea of treating persons as objects

As mentioned, the proposal does not change the main criteria for asserting jurisdiction, but it does introduce some novelties. Two of them seem particularly relevant here: the process at the early stages of the procedure (a kind of “pre-Dublin stage”) and the corrective mechanism, conceived as an evolution of the idea of a permanent scheme of relocation in times of emergency.

This pre-Dublin stage consists of a systematic assessment of the admissibility of the asylum claim, having regard to various deflective concepts (such a safe country of origin, first country of asylum, safe or ‘super safe’ third country, and a security screening of the applicant). These enquiries must be conducted by the first country of entry: only if the claim stands admissible, the enquiry into the Dublin criteria is carried out.

It must be observed that the two main actors (the asylum seeker and the national authorities) in this procedure are placed in a relationship of conflict: little chance seems to be left to the asylum seeker to actively participate in the procedure, and public officers are unavoidably perceived as hostile by him/her. This ‘applicant-unfriendly’ environment will not stimulate spontaneous compliance and full account of personal stories, thus generating systemic deficiencies.

The corrective mechanism is interesting, although in the current formulation is rather puzzling. A centralised system of registration of asylum claims will be put in place. Additionally, a reference key (composed of each MS’ GDP and population, each given 50% weighting) will determine which share of claims are assigned to each MS. The system will monitor in real time during the year the correspondence between the total number of asylum claims lodged in the EU and the division of them among the various MS. If a certain MS (MS#1) receives more than 150% of its assigned quota, then the corrective mechanism is automatically triggered. Additional asylum seekers will then be automatically assigned to other MS which are below their capacity (MS#2). If MS#2 refuses to take charge of an asylum seeker, a high amount has to be paid (€250,000 per person). The idea to impose a sanction (although the proposal uses a different vocabulary) on non-collaborative MS is not bad in principle, but it may be doubted that such an amount is proportionate.

Apart from that, what is really questionable is that the asylum seeker plays no role in this corrective procedure, and that the proposal does not indicate a method to identify MS#2. Maybe it is the MS which in that moment has the lowest performance of its assigned share? Or another MS? And in the latter case, will this be decided by a computer applying a casuistic algorithm? The proposal is incredibly ambiguous on this crucial point, and this “blind lottery approach” must be severely criticised. Again, people are treated as the object of procedures impinging on their lives: is all this human, rational and fair?

Finally, it must be taken into account that – even under the corrective mechanism – the overburdened State (MS#1) is, in any event, obliged to process the pre-Dublin stage and to conduct a dialogue with the assigned State regarding public security issues. To put it differently, there is no immediate relief for the overburdened State. Only after the person is moved to the automatically assigned MS#2, will this country verify the applicability of the Dublin criteria and then proceed with the subsequent steps (assessment of the claim or Dublin transfer to a MS#3). Thus, there is the possibility of a second mandatory movement: once again, is this rational? And cost-effective? And humane?

Time for ambitious pragmatism: Some ideas for EU policymakers

Drawing on the Commission proposal, it seems possible to improve some elements and reframe others. The purpose of the following suggestions is to reconcile the Dublin system with the authentic cornerstones of the CEAS (seeArticle 78(1) and also Article 80 of the TFEU) and with basic principles of rationality and fairness, both for MSs and applicants. To put it clearly, the proposal of the Commission is not all bad but it needs a robust correction.

Firstly, a permanent assessment of reception capacities (to be conducted through a reference key) and a centralised collection of all asylum claims (to be conducted as soon as possible) are highly needed. This idea of the proposal is good and should help to reduce instrumental and sterile political discussions. It is simply untenable that some MS must undergo a relevant pressure as frontline countries or as second-line favorite places of secondary movements while others give scarcely relevant support, or no support at all. It may be questioned which criteria should integrate the key and with which weight, but the overall idea is defensible.

Secondly, it is untenable to include a correction to an inherently bad system: the main standard criteria must be changed (in a similar vein, see Gauci). A primary role must be given to objectively verifiable preferences: after verification of admissibility of the claim (with full guarantees for the concerned applicant), an asylum seeker should be allocated to a given MS according to (wider) family links and other genuine links (see above). There would not be a simple or unqualified free choice of the applicant (as advocated by some NGOs): the applicant would be obliged to specify why a certain country is preferred and verification would be conducted by the interested MS.

It may be questioned if this solution would produce lengthy procedures or an excessive administrative burden on the first MS of entry. Well, this country is already obliged to conduct significant administrative activity under the pre-Dublin phase: a file is created, human resources are employed, time is spent on this activity and an interview is conducted. Is it so absurd to insert at such an early stage an ‘extra’ procedure aimed at showing a friendly face to the asylum seeker? One should also take into account that this extra procedure would be greatly facilitated by the asylum seeker’s cooperation, and that a different scenario would probably lead to a form of legal challenge by the asylum seeker, or his/her absconding. Would this be cost effective and desirable from a systematic point of view?

In this scenario, the asylum seeker would be asked to actively participate and to give clear indications regarding the presence of family members and of other connecting factors. In the case of several connected MSs (a circumstance which is not so probable), the choice could be left to the applicant.

In order to reassure MS whose asylum systems have undergone or are facing severe pressure (e.g. Germany or Sweden), if the competent State is already over its quota, the asylum seeker would be assigned to another (less) connected country, or only as extrema ratio to the State with the lowest performance rate of its share. In case of refusal of this MS to receive the concerned person, a proportionate financial disincentive should be established.

With the aim to reduce possible tensions coming from asylum seekers or from MS, a certain degree of freedom of movement of the beneficiary of protection should be accepted. If after recognition of refugee status or subsidiary protection by the designated MS, the person receives an effective job offer in another MS and security checks are fulfilled, the holder of international protection should have the possibility to accept this job offer, thus leading to a better allocation of the workforce. In this case, the issue should be raised as to whether, after voluntary establishment in another MS, protection duties should continue to bind the original MS or should be transferred to the second one, or whether such duties should simply cease.

Finally, a corrective emergency-mechanism should be conceived only for sudden and massive inflows and for supporting extremely precarious national asylum systems.

Do all these proposals look too innovative and unconventional? We all know perfectly what will happen if the Dublin system as it stands is maintained, or if only the limited ‘corrections’ set out in the Commission proposal are introduced. Should we wait for the next political crisis of the EU? Why not try to think of pragmatic and innovative way which could avoid tensions between MS, limit profits for smugglers as well as space for human rights abuses, avoid unnecessary sufferance, save public money and use human resources in a better way?

Continue reading “Dublin ‘reloaded’ or time for ambitious pragmatism?”

Meijers Committee on EU latest proposals on “Dublin”, Eurodac and European Asylum Agency.

ORIGINAL DOCUMENT ACCESSIBLE HERE

CM1609: Note on the proposed reforms of the Dublin Regulaton (COM (2016) 197), the Eurodac recast proposal (COM (2016) 272 fnal), and the proposal for an EU Asylum Agency (COM(2016)271 fnal)

Comments on the Dublin recast proposal

  1. General observatons

The Meijers Commitee would like to take this opportunity to comment on the proposed reform of the Dublin Regulaton, as set forth in the 6 April 2016 EC communicaton to the EP and Council (COM (2016) 197) and the 4 May 2016 proposal for a regulaton of the EP and Council establishing the criteria and mechanisms for determining the Member State responsible for examining an applicaton for internatonal protecton lodged in one of the Member States by a third-country natonal or a stateless person (recast) (COM (2016) 270). The later proposal will be further referred to here as Dublin III recast.

On page 4 of the 6 April 2016 communication, the Commission succinctly lists the shortcomings of the Dublin regulation: “difficulties in obtaining and agreeing on evidence proving a Member State’s responsibility for examining the asylum application, leading therefore to an increase in the number of rejections of requests to accept the transfer of applicants. Even where Member States accept transfer requests, only about a quarter of such cases result in effective transfers, and, after completion of a transfer, there are frequent cases of secondary movements back to the transferring Member State. The effectiveness of the system is further undermined by the current rules which provide for a shift of responsibility between Member States after a given time. […] A further impediment to the effective functioning of the Dublin system results from the difficulty in transferring applicants to Member States with systemic flaws in critical aspects of their asylum procedure or reception conditions. The effective suspension of Dublin transfers to Greece since 2011 has proved a particularly critical weakness in the system. […] The Common European Asylum System is also characterized by differing treatments of asylum seekers, including in terms of the length of asylum procedures or reception conditions across Member States, a situation which in turn encourages secondary movements.”

The Meijers Commitee wishes to add that Dublin’s ineffectiveness not only results from the difficulty of effectuating transfers but also from a general failure to initiate Dublin procedures, because asylum seekers have not been registered upon entering the EU. It is well known, not only that asylum seekers may seek to avoid registration, but that some Member States also disregard their obligation to register asylum seekers – some even on a large scale. It has been estimated, for example, that only half the persons entering Italy and applying for asylum somewhere in the EU were registered in that country1 In 2014, the proportion of physical Dublin transfers to the number of applicants for international protection in the EU was about 4 %, which suggests that Dublin is applied in far fewer cases than all those to which it is in fact applicable.2

To remedy these shortcomings, the Commission proposes two options: 1. Supplementing the present system with a corrective fairness mechanism, or 2. A new system for allocating asylum applications in the EU based on a distribution key. Because the second option would be difficult to envisage in the short or medium term, the Commission has chosen to pursue the first one.

The Meijers Commitee would frst of all like to point out that none of the shortcomings listed by the Commission will be remedied by the first opton, since it is essentally a contnuaton of the present Dublin system, which is demonstrably a failure. Why contnue with a broken system instead of fixing the shortcomings, even though this may not produce significant results in the short term? Additionally, the Meijers Committee points to the fact that the Dublin regulation was only very recently recast (19 July 2013), so this recast has been undertaken within 3 years of the entry into force of the last recast regulation, while that recast came 10 years after the entry into force of the Dublin II regulation.

The Meijers Commitee points out that at present there are two infringement procedures ongoing with regard to the Dublin regulation (in respect of Italy and Hungary), as well as four infringement procedures regarding the closely related Eurodac regulation (in respect of Croatia, Greece, Italy and Cyprus). Additionally, the Commission has recently sent a second supplementary letter to Greece expressing concerns over the persistence of serious deficiencies in the Greek asylum system, as well as a 10 February 2016 recommendation.

The belief that the Dublin system allocates responsibility unsustainability is widely held and is mentioned on page 3 of the explanatory memorandum to the Dublin III recast proposal. It is no coincidence that the infringement procedures mentoned above concern Member States on the EU’s external borders. These Member States have for a long tme complained that they cannot process the large numbers of asylum seekers entering the EU through their territories. While the suggested corrective fairness mechanism can go some way to remedy this situation, it will not change the fact that it is these Member States who will bear the brunt of new arrivals. The corrective fairness mechanism will not be triggered until a Member State has received 150% of the maximum allocated number of applications deemed fair on the basis of that State’s GDP and population size. This only partly corrects disproportionate burden sharing, without addressing the fundamental shortcomings of the Dublin system, namely that this system wrongly presupposes that the asylum procedures are adequate and up to standard in all Member States. On the contrary, Member States still continue to display systemic deficiencies, which make Dublin transfers impossible. As has been accepted by the ECtHR in several recent judgments, there are significant national differences in the quality of reception and asylum systems, which continue to exist and which encourage secondary movements.3 Additionally, the Commission must take stock of the fact that its similar attempt of September 2015 at such a mechanism has so far not been successful: of the 160,000 asylum-seekers who should have been relocated, only 1,500 (909 from Greece and 591 from Italy) have been relocated. The proposals under Dublin III recast do very little to address this unsustainable burden sharing, focusing instead on the risk of abuse of the rules laid down in the Dublin III regulation by individual asylum seekers, including their absconding.

  1. Detailed observatons

Continue reading “Meijers Committee on EU latest proposals on “Dublin”, Eurodac and European Asylum Agency.”

The Reform of the Dublin III Regulation

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF A STUDY COMMISSIONED BY THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

(Full text 72 pages accessible HERE) 

by Dr.  Francesco  Maiani,  (Associate  Professor,  University of  Lausanne)

 

“A number of Member States and representatives of the European Commission are highly resistant to the idea that asylum seekers might be better placed to know where their best chances of integration are than any officials, and that this knowledge might be helpful for everyone in both the short and long term. Yet in practice, it seems that it is asylum seekers who  move  to  seek  asylum  and  Member States that  determine  their applications.” (Elspeth  Guild  and  Sergio Carrera, 2016)

If the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) is to become “sustainable and fair”, it needs  a fundamental  reform  of its  responsibility allocation  system.

The Dublin system is ineffective and inefficient, inflicts hardship on protection seekers and damages the efficiency of the CEAS. Until now, the Relocation schemes established in September  2015  have  also failed  to produce  appreciable results.

These negative results can be traced back essentially to three structural factors: (a) the unattractiveness of EU allocation schemes to protection seekers, due in particular to their strict “no choice of destination” philosophy; (b) the fact that, in the absence of effective solidarity schemes, Member States tend to engage in defensive rather than cooperative behaviour; (c) a heavily bureaucratic approach, producing complexity and delays, compounded  by  the intergovernmental   nature  of  responsibility allocation  procedures.

Going from Dublin to “Dublin plus”, as proposed by the Commission in May 2016 (COM(2016) 270 final), is unlikely to solve any of these problems. In its normal operation, the system would remain essentially unchanged. It would thus be as unattractive as it now is for protection seekers. The response to applicants’ avoidance strategies would be essentially repressive, and judging from past experience this is unlikely to elicit widespread compliance. At the same time, the Commission’s proposals cut back significantly on applicants’ rights. They are at variance with key human rights guarantees on several points, and would downgrade protection standards in the CEAS. The proposal to restrict significantly Member States’ discretion under the Dublin system is also likely to set the Dublin  system  on  a  collision  course with  the   European  Convention  on  Human  Rights.

Dublin IV would probably aggravate current imbalances in responsibilities among Member States. In addition to retaining and expanding the “irregular entry” criterion, it would (a) concentrate extensive “gatekeeper” responsibilities on application States – in theory the border States; (b) concentrate on application States the responsibilities to examine most applications, including through shortened “take charge” deadlines; and (c) cement such responsibilities through the repeal of all clauses foreseeing the cessation of transfer of responsibilities among the Member States. The proposed “corrective” mechanism would leave the aforementioned “gatekeeper” responsibilities on application States, while probably being too cumbersome to re-allocate the other responsibilities more effectively than  on-going  relocation  schemes  do.

 

This last observation can be applied to the Dublin IV Proposal as a whole. While simplifying Dublin procedures in several respects, the proposal fails to address the main causes of delays and complexity: reliance on intergovernmental procedures and on involuntary transfers, liable to give raise to extensive litigation. Even the allocation procedure under the “corrective” mechanism – purportedly designed to relieve “overburdened” States – epitomises administrative complexity by accumulating procedural stages before the applicant is placed in  a  status  determination procedure.

If Dublin IV is to conform to human rights standards, many of the Commission’s proposals will require several amendments, detailed below. If it is to bring improvements, further amendments will  be  required.

If the EU is to have an effective responsibility allocation mechanism, a fundamental change of direction is required. Experience indicates that attempting to “allocate” persons without their consent, according to pre-determined criteria, is unworkable and comes at the expense  of ensuring effective and swift  access  to status  determination.

In order to have a workable system, it is necessary to forgo ambitions of producing predetermined allocative results – fair or unfair – and focus instead on minimising the time, effort and coercion required to place the applicant in an asylum procedure. In this perspective, the allocation system – alone or in conjunction with other CEAS instruments – should: (a) elicit the cooperation of protection seekers; (b) defuse Member States’ incentive to engage in defensive behaviour; and (c) drastically reduce bureaucratic complexity  and  coercion. Within  this general   template,  three  models are examined here.

“Free choice” is the ideal-type of the “light” allocation system. It presents so many advantages (including preventing irregular movement and smugglers’ activities in Europe) that  it  should  not be discarded  without  serious consideration.

Should “free choice” be considered infeasible, a “limited choice” model could be progressively  constructed starting  from   a stripped-down  Dublin  system  (“Dublin  minus”).

“Dublin minus” – i.e. the current system, without the criteria based on residence and entry – would entail a radical simplification while producing nearly identical distributive results to the current system. It would already constitute a distinct improvement. Just like the current system, however, it would incite applicants to avoid identification and engage in irregular movements, and States to engage in defensive behaviour. To reduce these effects, the system could be amended so as to give a range of politically approved choices to applicants, based on much-expanded “meaningful link” criteria and on the permanent offer  of  reception  places  from  “under-burdened”  States.

As the experience of the 1999 Humanitarian Evacuation Programme suggests, such a consent-based system might perform far better than strictly “no choice” systems such as the  September  relocation  schemes.

“Light” allocation systems would facilitate early identification, reduce irregular movements within the EU, and liberate resources for the really important tasks of the asylum system: to provide dignified reception, to identify persons in need of protection in fair and effective procedures, and to return in dignity those found not to be in need. Like any responsibility allocation system, they would of course need accompanying measures. Indeed, there are three types of reform that the EU should engage in regardless of what responsibility-allocation  system it chooses.

 

First, it is indispensable to guarantee to protection seekers and beneficiaries in every Member State the full enjoyment of the rights recognised by international and EU law. In this respect, monitoring the existing standards seems more urgent than reforming them. In addition to renewed activism on the part of the Commission, the Proposal for an EU Asylum Agency (COM(2016) 271 final) might bring an important contribution in the form of enhanced monitoring and capacity assessment. The progressive centralisation of services supporting status determination might also improve convergence and constitute an effective  way  of pooling resources.

Second, financial solidarity should be considerably strengthened. Indeed, there is a strong case for placing on the EU budget, suitably expanded, asylum-related expenses that are currently placed on national budgets – identification, registration, screening, reception and processing of the claim. Such costs are distributed asymmetrically and are incurred by Member States in the provision of a collective good benefitting, to some extent at least, all others. Their centralisation might prevent under-provision, defuse incentives to engage in defensive behaviour, and contribute to raising reception and protection standards where this is most needed, contributing to reducing secondary movements. The progressive centralisation of costs would not preclude maintaining EU funding in a capacity-building perspective, as under the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF), nor introducing financial incentives in  support  of e.g.   EU-sponsored  allocation  or  relocation  schemes.

Third, introducing real mobility rights for protection beneficiaries would make responsibility allocation more sustainable – especially under systems not granting full free choice to applicants. It would facilitate acceptance of a less than ideal initial allocation, improve integration prospects and self-reliance for beneficiaries of protection, and possibly defuse the fears of some States of first application of facing, over time, unsustainable responsibilities.

Continue reading …

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  1. INTRODUCTION 
  2. THE EXISTING ACQUIS AND ITS IMPLEMENTATION 

2.1.   The Dublin System                                                                 

  • The basic features  of  the Dublin  system
  • The Dublin system  in  practice

2.2.   EU Relocation Schemes                                                        

  • The basic features  of  EU  relocation  schemes
  • The September 2015  relocation  schemes in  practice

2.3.   Investigating the Causes of Past Failures                           

  • Introductory remarks
  • Root cause  #1:  neglect  for  protection  seekers’ motives and  agency
  • Root cause  #2:  unmitigated  conflict of national  interests
  • Root cause  #3:  cumbersome  intergovernmental  procedures
  • Lessons to be  drawn  for the reform  of Dublin  III
  1. AVENUES FOR REFORMING THE DUBLIN SYSTEM 28

3.1.   The Commission’s “Dublin Plus” Approach                      

  • Context and  philosophy  of  the  Dublin  IV  proposal
  • Proposals to  “streamline” the Dublin  system
  • The “corrective mechanism”

3.2.   Dublin IV: a Critical Appraisal                                              

  • The Dublin IV  approach:  fair, sustainable and  efficient?
  • The Conformity of Dublin IV to  Human  Rights
  • A summary of  the  main points

3.3.   In Search of an Alternative: from “Heavy” to “Light” Systems                                       

  • “Light” systems:  philosophy, virtues  and  (purported)  risks
  • Three models:  free  choice,  limited  choice, Dublin  minus
  • “Light” systems and  emergency  situations
  • Accompanying reforms:  convergence,  solidarity, and free  movement
  1. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
    ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
    REFERENCES                                                                                        

The Bratislava Declaration on migration: European irresponsibility instead of solidarity

ORIGINAL PUBLISHED ON OMNIA (Odysseus Network) SITE (27 Sep 2016)

By Phillippe De Bruycker (ULB/EUI) & Evangelia (Lilian) Tsourdi (Max Weber Fellow, EUI)

The Bratislava Declaration refers on two occasions to “the principles of responsibility and solidarity”. The basic idea is to “broaden EU consensus” by devising a “long term migration policy” on the basis of the two principles.

At first look, this seems logical and even advisable. Since 2015, the EU has been unable to respond effectively to the ‘refugee crisis’. It is only the fragile ‘deal’ with Turkey that brought the illusion of a solution by externalising asylum provision to a third country. The EU remains profoundly divided about possible internal solutions. A European East-West divide has appeared, in addition to the well-known North-South division about the principles evoked in the Bratislava Declaration. Member States in the South have been complaining for years about the lack of solidarity measures, while many Member States in the Northwest have castigated them about their inability to implement their responsibilities. More recently, Member States in the Central/Eastern part of the EU (more precisely the Visegrad group consisting of Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland) are refusing, ostensibly in the name of responsibility, to engage in the type of solidarity requested by no longer only the Member States in the South, but also those in the Northwest.

The objective to heal the wounds and reunify EU Member States around the same principles of solidarity and responsibility appears reasonable and even attractive in this setting. If all Member States (including those in the South) are fully responsible, the others (in particular those in the East) will demonstrate greater solidarity, so that the problem may be solved in a balanced way. This presentation based on an opposition between responsibility and solidarity is, however, simplistic and even incorrect from a legal point of view. If there is indeed in EU law a precise legal provision that can be considered to embody responsibility, applicable in the same manner throughout EU law, the same does not hold true for solidarity (1). Moreover, effective solidarity and fair sharing are a prerequisite to responsibility in EU migration and asylum policies, rather than the other way round  (2).

1. More responsibility than solidarity in EU law in general

When searching in the EU treaties for the word “responsibility”, Article 165(1) TFEU provides an excellent example of the kind of answer that appears: following this provision, “The Union shall contribute to the development of quality education by encouraging cooperation between Member States and, if necessary, by supporting and supplementing their action, while fully respecting theresponsibility of the Member States for the content of teaching and the organisation of education systems and their cultural and linguistic diversity”.Responsibility refers in this sense simply to competence.

Responsibility understood as competence can be envisaged as a power as well as a duty. It is not so surprising that this notion has been linked in the case law of the Court of Justice with the principle of loyalty, now referred to as the principle of sincere co-operation under Article 4(3) TEU. The principle embodies, respectively, a positive obligation (taking measures to ensure fulfilment of obligations), and a negative obligation (abstaining from measures that could jeopardize this fulfilment). It is this first part that is often evoked by Member State governments; with ‘responsibility’ they refer to Member States’ duty to fulfil their obligations and honour their commitments under EU law.

Loyalty has been made explicit under Article 4(3) of the TEU. The principles of loyalty and solidarity are sometimes used interchangeably in legal scholarship, with loyalty considered a facet of solidarity. Under this understanding, the responsibility of Member States to implement their obligations under EU law is a sign of solidarity to each other. This is, however, a narrow understanding of solidarity, which is a notion different from responsibility.

When searching in EU treaties for the word ‘solidarity’, one finds, in particular since the Lisbon Treaty, more results than a similar search for ‘responsibility’. In some instances, solidarity fulfils an aspirational role, providing political orientation, rather than forming the basis of legally binding duties.  For example, following article 3(5) TEU, “In its relations with the wider world, the Union shall (…) contribute to peace, security, the sustainable development of the Earth, solidarity and mutual respect among peoples…”

However, in other areas solidarity forms the basis of concrete actions and legally binding duties as in article 222(1) TFEU, following which “The Union and its Member States shall act jointly in a spirit of solidarity if a Member State is the object of a terrorist attack or the victim of a natural or man-made disaster. The Union shall mobilise all the instruments at its disposal, including the military resources made available by the Member States, to:

(a)       – prevent the terrorist threat in the territory of the Member States;

– protect democratic institutions and the civilian population from any terrorist attack;

– assist a Member State in its territory, at the request of its political authorities, in the event of a terrorist attack;

(b)       assist a Member State in its territory, at the request of its political authorities, in the event of a natural or man-made disaster”.

These latter provision shows that solidarity is not linked with the fulfilment of responsibilities but rather with providing assistance to other Member States in order to allow them to implement their obligations.

Interestingly, solidarity understood in this sense does not have the same status as responsibility understood as loyalty. There is indeed no legal provision of solidarity applicable throughout different policies that would create a general duty to support, but rather different and more or less strong expressions of solidarity. As a consequence, one has to examine each particular policy and the provisions in the EU treaties pertaining to it in order to ascertain whether there are concrete solidarity duties and what the extent of these may be. This leads us to the meaning of solidarity in policies on border checks, asylum and immigration as governed by Articles 77 to 80 TFEU.

2. More solidarity than responsibility in EU migration and asylum policies

When searching for the word ‘responsibility’ or ‘responsible’ in those provisions, there are four hits. Firstly, Article 72 states that the EU competences regarding border checks, asylum and immigration do not affect the “responsibilitiesincumbent upon Member States with regard to the maintenance of law and order and the safeguard of internal security” and, secondly, in Article 73, following which “it shall be open to Member States to organise between themselves and under their responsibility forms of cooperation and coordination as they deem appropriate between the competent departments of their administrationsresponsible for safeguarding national security”. Responsibility in those provisions refers to the notion of competence, i.e. that the Member States remain competent for the maintenance of law and order and internal security, and even exclusively competent for national security.

Another ‘hit’ is found in Article 78(2), requesting the European Union to adopt measures for a common European asylum system comprising, under point (e), “criteria and mechanisms for determining which Member State is responsible for considering an application for asylum or subsidiary protection”. This is the legal basis of the famous “Dublin System”, based on Regulation 604/2013, determining the responsible Member State for examining an application lodged in the EU. As the flaws of this system have already been analysed in numerous publications,including in this blog, it is not necessary to explain them once more.

Let us just remind ourselves that the origin of this regulation goes back to aConvention signed in Dublin on 15 June 1990 (this explains why specialists of EU asylum continue to speak about ‘Dublin’ in relation to this system). The aim of this system is to indicate which Member State is competent when an asylum application is introduced in the EU on the basis of a certain number of criteria. In practice, the responsible Member State will more often than not be the one of the legal or illegal first entry of the third-country national to the EU.

Responsibility in this regulation refers to the idea of competence regarding the examination of asylum applications, so that all Member States have to deal with the asylum applications for which they are responsible. The problem is that the Dublin system was not devised on the basis of solidarity. On the contrary, apart from exceptions based on the right to family unity, or the rights of the child, it is premised on the idea that each Member State should deal with the applications of asylum seekers whose presence is attributable to actions of that Member State. This could be either because it let them enter the EU voluntarily by issuing a visa or residence permit, or involuntarily by not controlling its external borders effectively. It is not a coincidence that the Dublin system was conceived by the North-Western Member States who drafted the Schengen Convention (France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) which is at the origin of the Dublin Convention. Solidarity was not an issue at that time in such a small and coherent space. Moreover, Dublin was devised in a purely intergovernmental framework, a decade before the beginning of the implementation of the supranational method with regard to asylum policy, as introduced by the Treaty of Amsterdam, without any actor such as the European Commission looking out for the general interest rather than the national interest of each State. It is an excellent example of the kind of measure that Northern governments managed to impose on other Member States of the European Union, who can try to amend it subsequently, although only with the support of those governments, which explains why this has not been possible regarding the core of the system with the regulations Dublin II in 2003 and Dublin III in 2013.

This is crucial as this policy is, like the area of external borders, characterised by asymmetric burdens between the Member States due to the fate of geography. Following this logic, Greece should have examined all the asylum applications that could have been introduced by the hundreds of thousands of third-country nationals who entered the EU through its borders during the year 2015. It should also have intercepted the persons trying to enter the EU through the Greek borders without the requested documents (a passport with very often at least a short-term visa), as well as taken their fingerprints in order to store them inEurodac, a database helping to determine in practice the responsible Member State. In this particular case, it would mean that Greek authorities should have assumed responsibility of one million third-country nationals just because they entered the EU through the Greek territory.

Does it mean that the Southern Member States are legally wrong when they ask for solidarity from the other Member States, and that they should instead, or at least firstly, fulfil their responsibilities deriving from EU law? The answer is actually much more complicated due to Article 80 TFEU, which reads as follows:“The policies of the Union set out in this Chapter and their implementation shall be governed by the principle of solidarity and fair sharing of responsibility, including its financial implications, between the Member States. Whenever necessary, the Union acts adopted pursuant to this Chapter shall contain appropriate measures to give effect to this principle”.

This provision is one of those detailing the idea of solidarity in the policies for border checks, asylum and immigration. A quick reading may give the impression that this provision is precisely about two principles that have to be balanced, much like in the Bratislava Declaration. Under this reading, Member States should first fulfil their responsibilities by applying the Dublin Regulation and assuming responsibility for the asylum seekers arriving on their territory before they can expect solidarity. In the event of a failure to take up their responsibilities, they should not expect solidarity, or rather they should be found ‘undeserving’ of it.

However, this provision is about one and not two principles and, more importantly, about the principle of “solidarity and fair sharing of responsibility”.It is interesting to note that the words “fair sharing of” have simply been omitted from the Bratislava Declaration, while they completely change the meaning and content of what is at stake. Instead of an opposition between responsibility and solidarity that should be balanced against each other, the idea of fair sharing of responsibility actually reinforces that of solidarity. The policies of the Union on border checks, asylum and immigration are governed by the principle of solidarity, and responsibilities between the Member States in these areas must be shared in a fair way. If one will agree that fairness leaves some margin of discretion to the European Union, this notion refers to the ideas of equity and justice and thus provides an indication about how the EU policy on borders, immigration and asylum must be conceived and implemented.

It therefore appears that the legal obligation of the EU is not to balance the two principles of solidarity and responsibility, but rather to realise solidarity through a fair sharing of responsibilities. This means also that the concerned Member States should not be expected to implement Dublin as pre-condition for solidarity, but should instead benefit from a system aiming at a fair sharing of responsibility between all EU Member States. Some will say that Dublin is as such not contrary to EU law and that the system could be accompanied by “appropriate measures to give effect to the principle of solidarity and fair sharing of responsibility”, following the wording of Article 80 TFEU. The problem is that Dublin is the source of the asymmetric burdens between Member States, so that it seems difficult to amend or revise it without reversing the basic principle on which it is based.

Conclusion: responsibility or irresponsibility?

Nothing about this constitutional requirement is mentioned in the Bratislava Declaration. On the contrary, the issue of the relocation of asylum seekers, as a concrete solidarity measure at the core of the debate since 2015, has simply disappeared from the agenda, despite the call of the first summit of the Mediterranean countries of the EU organized in Athens on 9 September. This is the case despite the fact that the relocation measures were based on mandatory EU rules, which most Member States do not apply, while some of them openly challenge them, for instance Hungary through the organisation of a referendumcalling the population to vote against them.

What remains is a kind of “flexible solidarity”, following the words of the joint statement of the Heads of Governments of the V4 Countries (the Visegrad group) defined as a concept that “should enable Member State to decide on specific forms of contribution talking into account their experience and potential”, knowing that “any distribution mechanism should be voluntary”. Some observers have already tried to imagine what this could entail. This will become clearer when the Council of Ministers takes a position on the Commission proposal reforming the Dublin system (Dublin IV), which contains a relocation mechanism that appears ambitious but that would in fact be dysfunctional, as underlined by Francesco Maiani in his report for the European Parliament. The European legislator should keep in mind that, despite the discretion left by this provision, Article 80 TFEU requires a strong solidarity mechanism aiming at “fair sharing of responsibility” between the Member States.

The retreat of the EU regarding the issue of solidarity had actually been announced by the President of the Commission himself in his State of the Union speech, where he stated that “Solidarity must be given voluntarily. It must come from the heart. It cannot be forced”. This clearly contradicts the mandatory character of the relocation decision, which was imposed on 22 September 2015 by a qualified majority in the Council against the opposition of Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and the Czech Republic.

The Bratislava Declaration announces a double evolution. First, a so-called principle of responsibility is prioritised over the principle of solidarity and fair sharing, the latter reduced to a “commitment by a number of Member States to offer immediate assistance to strengthen the protection of Bulgaria’s border with Turkey and continue support to other frontline States”. Secondly, “the objective to ensure full control of external borders” is prioritised over the asylum policy, which is not even mentioned in the text.

The so-called “responsibility to ensure full border controls” is nothing else than a rhetoric contrary to the Treaties, ignoring that the Schengen Borders Code is without prejudice to the rights of asylum seekers (see in particular Articles 3 and 4 of Regulation 2016/399 codifying the Schengen Borders Code). Trying to convince public opinion that asylum seekers can simply be rejected at the border without any further examination of their claim is not only illegal but also populistic. This has proven to be impossible, even in the case of a safe third-country, for example Turkey on the basis of the EU/Turkey agreement of 18 March 2016 (see in this blog Henri Labayle’s ‘The EU-Turkey Agreement on migration and asylum: False pretences or a fool’s bargain?‘).

The President of the European Council, Donald Tusk wrote in his letter of invitation to the Bratislava Summit that “Europeans all too often heard politically correct statements that Europe cannot become a fortress and that it must remain open”. This is indeed not the case of the Bratislava Declaration where the Heads of State and government want to improve the communication with citizens through the “use of clear and honest language (…) with strong courage to challenge simplistic solutions of extreme or populist political forces”. The problem is that they do exactly this by pretending to build a Fortress Europe, that is de jure impossible. They probably want to prove that this is possible de facto. This is nothing less than European irresponsibility instead of solidarity.