For many years, Lesbos has been a key point of arrival for those seeking refuge who cross the Aegean Sea. The island has featured in the European media primarily as a negative example: in 2020, a devastating fire destroyed the severely overcrowded Moria refugee camp. Six years after the fire, Clarissa Groß spoke to lawyers and NGO staff on the ground about the extent to which Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) is also having an impact at the external borders. She examined the state of the values enshrined in the Treaty: respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law, as well as the protection of human rights.
“In reality – and in contrast to the Union’s stated values – the lives of those seeking protection continue to be characterised by isolation in camps on the very geographical and social periphery,” reports Clarissa Groß. As a result, potential human rights violations remain largely invisible to the rest of Europe. Reports from the Closed Controlled Access Centre (CCAC) in Mavrovouni – which temporarily succeeded the Moria camp – of hunger, unbearable heat in summer and cold in winter suggest that concerns about such violations are not unfounded.
Groß elaborates: “Relevant court rulings establish that such factors – namely inadequate nutrition, poor hygiene conditions, a lack of protection from heat, cold and the elements, and insufficient medical care – combined with the duration of detention, may constitute a human rights violation.” This is the case when the threshold of severity for inhuman or degrading treatment within the meaning of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights is exceeded.
Contradiction with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights
The CCAC Mavrovouni is now to be replaced by the CCAC Vastria, which resembles a high-security prison and has been built far from any infrastructure. “The risk of wildfires, inadequate water supply and a lack of connection to the outside world raise doubts as to whether it will be possible to provide accommodation for those seeking protection there that complies with human rights and EU law,” explains the legal scholar. The Paréa Community Centre stood out positively, where aid organisations treated those accommodated on Lesbos as equals and took their needs seriously.
Furthermore, ‘pushbacks’ – that is, preventing the start of an asylum procedure through the informal rejection of those seeking protection – still appeared to be part of the Greek authorities’ modus operandi. Clarissa Groß points out: “This contradicts the right to asylum enshrined in Article 18 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.”
As a result, according to Groß, the situation on Lesbos remains characterised by uncertainty, isolation and a disregard for the very values on which the European legal order is founded. In conclusion, she states: “European values lose their credibility when they are invoked within the Union but relativised or ignored at its external borders. Whether Europe lives up to its own standards is decided precisely in those places where hardly anyone looks.”
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