Brussels, 05/02/2009 (Agence Europe) - Through an own initiative report adopted on Thursday 5 February, MEPs slammed the “intolerable conditions” suffered by migrants in detention centres throughout the EU. The poor detention and hygiene conditions, lack of medical and legal aid, no solidarity between member states were criticised by the majority of MEPs following visits were carried out to several detention centres in the EU.
The own initiative report by Martine Roure (PES, France), adopted by 483 to 39, with 45 abstentions, takes stock of 10 visits carried out by the EP civil liberties committee (Libe) to detention centres to check whether Community law on holding asylum seekers was being adhered to. “We witnessed sometimes very difficult scenes to which I believe it is our duty as elected representatives to react,” said Roure after the vote. MEPs noted on several occasions that conditions in the detention centres were “intolerable from the point of view of hygiene, overcrowding and the equipment available”. They said that they were above all concerned by the “prison conditions” in which illegal immigrants and asylum seekers were being held, although they had committed no crimes. They found that the people detained were “not systematically informed of the reasons for their detention, of their rights and of the progress in their case”. Moreover, asylum seekers and migrants complained systematically about insufficient and inadequate medical care, in particular for pregnant women and victims of torture. The report is critical, too, of the lack of access to free legal aid, which can sometimes amount to “no more than a list of lawyers' names”. MEPs also expressed their concern at the frequent lack of quality interpretation services in some of the centres visited. They regret, too, that a number of member states are making increasing use of detention and stress that a person should not in any event be held in detention for the sole reason that he/she is seeking international protection. The visits revealed that, in some member states, there were significant deficiencies with regard to existing directives and, in particular, the 2003 directive on reception conditions. MEPs called on the European Commission, in cooperation with the Parliament, to put in place a permanent system of visits. They want Libe to continue its visits in the European Union. They also want asylum seekers and immigrants to be lodged in open reception centres, rather than in closed units. They also called on member states to show greater solidarity with the countries that are most affected by the challenges of immigration and they do not want this solidarity to be limited to technical or financial support. They call on the Commission to study the possibility of proposing a European solidarity instrument which will relieve the burden posed by the high number of refugees received by member states with external borders. There is also, in the report, an explicit call for NGOs specialising in the protection of the fundamental rights of migrants and asylum seekers to be granted access to the centres. (B.C./transl.rt)