United political will, commitment to Council of Europe (CoE) standards and durable solutions. These are the recommendations made by Tomáš Boček, Special Representative of the Secretary General on Migration and Refugees.
In a report published on Monday 26 February – the first since his appointment in 2016 – Boček, warns that, despite tougher border controls, “refugees and migrants will continue to arrive in significant numbers over the next years”.
The challenge for CoE member states will be twofold, he says: “to ensure that the measures they adopt to reduce migration flows and to return failed asylum-seekers respect human rights standards” and to put in place inclusion policies to promote for refugees and migrants with the right to remain in Europe. This presupposes “zero tolerance” towards pushbacks at borders and simplified access to asylum procedures and collaboration with the CoE in developing integration policies and combating “populist, xenophobic speech, ‘fake news’ and hate crimes”. For this, there needs to be “united political will” among the member states.
Boček also advocates “legal pathways to Europe”, which “ensure respect for human rights” throughout the migratory process.
The priorities of the Special Representative for 2018-2019 are the protection of children and other vulnerable migrants and refugees, identification of good practice that can be shared and the follow-up to the recommendations in his mission reports on five of the nine countries visited in the context of his first report: Greece, Turkey, France, Italy and Serbia and two transit zones in Hungary). A sixth report on Bulgaria will be published in early 2018.
Also announced was co-operation with other international organisations “to develop further synergies with them and identify scope for joint projects”. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)