Brussels, 01/04/2015 (Agence Europe) - “Morocco must turn down the role of Europe's policeman”, as suggested by the readmission agreements proposed to this country and all its neighbours on the southern shore of the Mediterranean in exchange for a facilitation of visas to enter Community territory. Negotiations are underway with Rabat and are also to open with Tunisia.
The recommendation was made by the International Federation for Human Rights (known by its French acronym, FIDH), which has just published a report, presented in Rabat on Tuesday 31 March, on the results of the first year of the new migration policy adopted by this country in relation to the EU. Morocco must “break with its security approach which makes it harder instead of easier for migrants to integrate”, the secretary general of the FIDH stated during this presentation. The Moroccan government is called upon to “consolidate the efforts made” in its migration policy (dating from September 2013) and “not to go backwards”. According to local organisations quoted by the FIDH, “there are several signs indicating a worrying security turnaround in the Moroccan migration policy”. There have been reports of “massive arrest and incarceration operations of migrants, particularly in the forest bordering the city of Melilla”. Spain adopted a law in 2014 “authorising the police and the civil guard to return migrants illegally crossing the borders at Ceuta and Melilla to the Moroccan border, in violation of international law, particularly asylum law and the principle of non-refoulement”, the FIDH notes.
These criticisms are likely to revive the concerns of the countries of the southern shore at having to do the EU's “dirty work”. Tunisia has also been appealed to and its foreign minister indicated, on the sidelines of the recent session of the Association Council (17 March), that the idea of a sort of barracks in that country of illegal migrants returned from Europe needed to be studied (see EUROPE 11276).
Only Gaddafi's Libya was willing to sign an agreement for the readmission and detention on its soil of migrants sent back from Europe. A protocol agreement was signed on 23 July 2007. Its results have been regularly decried by both the European Parliament and human rights defence organisations. In 2012, the FIDH observed that in the camps set up by Libya at the time, under Gaddafi, it met people who had been incarcerated after having been intercepted on makeshift boats in the Mediterranean. Their testimony suggests that “refoulements to Libya (took place) in violation of the international standards reiterated in a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (Hirsi v. Italy, 23 February 2012)”. The agreement signed by Brussels and Tripoli “shows how Libya was brought on board the European mechanism aiming to externalise border controls to prevent arrivals of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers on European soil”. This is the subject of the readmission agreements currently being proposed to the countries of the southern shore. (Fathi B'Chir)