16/05/2008 | Migration, International Protection and Economic Co-operation
PACE Committee on Migration, Refugees and Population will be holding two hearings in Paris next week, one dealing with asylum policies in Europe, the other with the situation of environmental refugees. “Improving the quality and consistency of asylum decisions in the Council of Europe member states” is the theme of the first hearing, which will take place on Monday 19 May from 10 am to 12.30 pm.The second hearing, to be held on Tuesday 20 May from 9 to 11.30 am, will address “The problem of environmental refugees”.
28/04/2008 | Migration, International Protection and Economic Co-operation
The Chair of the PACE Migration Committee, Corien Jonker (Netherlands EPP/CD) today called on the Turkish authorities to launch an immediate investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of four irregular migrants who were reported to have been drowned when they were allegedly forced to swim across the river border between Turkey and Iraq in Sirnak province.
04/04/2008 | Migration, International Protection and Economic Co-operation
In St. Petersburg today, the International Parliamentary Conference on the globalisation of migration processes and problems of legal regulation, as jointly organised by the PACE and the Interparliamentary Assembly of Member Nations of the CIS (IPA CIS), adopted a declaration inviting CIS and Council of Europe member States to develop common strategies for framing laws and policies on migration.
17/12/2007 | Migration, International Protection and Economic Co-operation
An EU proposal to fix at 18 months the maximum period of detention for irregular migrants in Europe “flies in the face of humanity”, according to the Chair of PACE's Migration Committee. Speaking on International Migrants Day, 18 December, Mevlüt Çavusoglu said the EU’s Returns Directive was equivalent to “locking up irregular migrants and throwing away the key”.
26/11/2007 | Migration, International Protection and Economic Co-operation
Speaking today at the 3rd plenary Assembly of the European Roma Travellers Forum, Ms Donka Banovic (Serbia, EPP/CD) member of PACE Committee on Migration, Refugees and Population, declared:” Ever since the 1960s, the Assembly argued that Roma are in need of special protection. Roma are the largest European minority, but one that does not always fit into the definitions of national or linguistic minorities.
22/11/2007 | Migration, International Protection and Economic Co-operation
Andrej Zernovski (“the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”, ALDE) of PACE's Migration Committee today urged European Health Ministers meeting in Bratislava to develop health services that are socially and culturally adjusted to the specific needs of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees. “The right to health associated with access to health care is one of the basic universal human rights and should be equally applied to all people including migrants, asylum seekers, refugees and displaced persons”, stated Mr Zernovski.
25/10/2007 | Migration, International Protection and Economic Co-operation
Mevlüt Çavusoglu (Turkey, EDG), Chair of PACE Committee on Migration, Refugees and Population, today urged European Ministers of Justice meeting in Lanzarote to clarify the rights applicable to regular and irregular migrants in Europe. “Migrants are not second class human beings with second class rights”, stated Mr Çavusoglu. “They are entitled to access to justice and protection of their basic human rights”.
23/10/2007 | Migration, International Protection and Economic Co-operation
The Euro-Asian/Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Forum on Migration, organised by PACE's Sub-Committee on Migration in cooperation with the Turkish Parliament, today ended in Antalya (Turkey) after a two days meeting. The Forum, attended by parliamentarians from European, Asian and Mediterranean countries, as well as representatives of international organizations and experts, approved a statement that PACE’s Committee will present at the 8th Conference of European Ministers of the Council of Europe member states responsible for migration to be held in Kyiv (September 2008). The participants strongly condemned the terrorist attack in South-East Turkey on 21 October 2007 and communicated its deepest sympathy to the relatives of those who were killed.
17/10/2007 | Migration, International Protection and Economic Co-operation
At the end of a two-day visit to Malta, PACE Rapporteur on large scale arrival of migrants and asylum seekers, Morten Østergaard (Denmark, ALDE), expressed concern that Malta was struggling to cope with the arrival of irregular migrants and asylum seekers. “Warning bells have been ringing about the situation in Malta, but now a solution has to be found,” the Rapporteur commented. “1,665 persons have arrived in Malta already this year, and it is clear that the reception facilities are not adequate to deal with this number of persons.”
11/05/2007 | Migration, International Protection and Economic Co-operation
The Migration Committee of PACE and the Greek Parliament’s Migration Committee today called for the creation of a Euro-Mediterranean Migration Observatory in a joint statement adopted at a meeting in Athens. The Observatory, says the statement, should improve the common monitoring of migration policies and processes in the Euro-Mediterranean area, and better integrate migration and migrants into the economic, social, democratic and inter-cultural development of the region.
19/03/2007 | Migration, International Protection and Economic Co-operation
John Greenway (United Kingdom, EDG), at the end of a visit to Spain to gather information on its experience of regularising over 500,000 irregular migrants, has commended the Spanish authorities on helping to provide “a dignified future” for many in a highly vulnerable situation, and said Europe has “a lot to learn” from the programme.
16/02/2007 | Migration, International Protection and Economic Co-operation
Senator Paschal Mooney (Ireland, ALDE), who is preparing a report for PACE’s Migration Committee on “Europe’s response to humanitarian disasters”, will meet on 19 February in Geneva with the Director of the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the President and the Director-General of the ICRC and the Directors of the Humanitarian Offices of Finland and Germany (who have been co-ordinating aid on behalf of the EU).