Brussels, 30/05/2006 (Agence Europe) - On 23 May Amnesty International (AI) published its annual report on the human rights situation in the world and affirmed that 2005 was an uncomfortable year for the European Union. The NGO says that this year again demonstrates that security had eclipsed the issue of human rights, with the situation in the latter, failing to improve. The director of the European AI Office, Dick Oosting, states that, “The CIA rendition scandals have put European governments on the defensive by exposing some of the disturbing practices carried out in the name of fighting terrorism”. The report underlines that in the United Kingdom “new measures supposedly for fighting terrorism are imposed in law”, when in fact the country already has anti-terrorist legislation that is one of the strictest in the region. Mr Oosting says that the revelation of violations of fundamental rights in the areas of asylum and immigration have also put the Union in an embarrassing position. The AI report illustrates shortcomings in this domain in more than half of all Union Member States. The Amnesty report illustrates that in Spain, Greece, Italy and the United Kingdom alone, certain people seeking asylum were “illegally placed in detention” and others “were deprived of advice and necessary legal assistance”. While the number of asylum seekers in Europe is continually falling, Mr Oosting was eager to point out that “governments reacted as if the opposite was true, introducing restrictive laws which fail to guarantee basic protection and sometimes using force to keep people out”. Abusive treatment by law enforcement officials was another frequent problem registered in the report, often aimed at foreign communities and other minorities. Mr Oosting concluded that, "The deterioration of human rights standards we see across Europe has broader implications: it weakens the EU's legitimacy to denounce abuses of other countries and it risks undermining the EU's essential role in the global protection of human rights".