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A new migration policy for Europe

European Parliament, Room P5B001
October 17th, 2013, 9.00 a.m. – 12.30 p.m.

In the past three years, European Alternatives has organised a number of specific sessions of discussion on migrants’ rights and the politics of detention, which represents a growing and worrisome issue across Europe. This area of work culminated over the last two years in the coordination and implementation of transnational campaigns against the administrative detention and the role of civil society organisations and media in reporting the conditions of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants held in administrative detention in many EU Member States, notably through the Open Access Now (officially launched jointly with the Migreurop network in 2011) and LasciateCIEntrare campaigns (broad-based coalition of associations based in Italy calling for access to the detention centres for journalists and CSOs against the suspension and restrictions on the right to information), joined in 2011.

The envisaged future process will build on this campaigning experience gained so far in the coordination and implementation of specific transnational coalitions, aiming at raising awareness amongst both European politicians and the general public about the defence of migrants’ rights, the routinisation of immigration detention, and the participation in thematic networks working on these issues at the European level, including the EYCA (European Year of Citizens Alliance) working group on European and inclusive citizenship that is elaborating a final proposal to be presented at the European Parliament, and citizens manifesto being developed by European Alternatives in advance of the European elections in 2014, as part of the citizens’ pact of European Alternatives calling for greater citizen participation in European decision-making.

The aim is to expand the scope of these activities to a more active role in contrasting detention and proposing solutions that go beyond the right of access to the centres and the defence of the right to information for citizens.

This meeting will offer the opportunity for a reasoned and constructive debate with Member of the European Parliament, Ministries of EU Member States, and other institutional and civil society representatives from throughout Europe. The event will focus on alternatives to custody following administrative decisions, the reduction of the length of detention and the conditions of detention as analysed during the course of a much broader consultation process involving activists, civil society organisations, journalists and legal experts.