Thread by @StevePeers

EU Commission proposal re emergency measures for Poland, Latvia and Lithuania re asylum applications at border with Belarus - ec.europa.eu/commission/pre…
Creates temporary exceptions re EU law asylum procedures, fast-track returns, reception conditions

I'm absent from Twitter in principle during the USS strike action - but I'm making an exception to tweet about this, as it's an emergency proposal on the human rights of people starving/freezing to death on the border.

More when the full text is available

Full text of proposal for emergency measures re EU asylum law and Poland, Lithuania and Latvia re Belarus border now published - ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/p…

Comments to follow

Striking that Lithuania has received EU support re beds and heating for the people needing it, while the implication is that Latvia and Poland turned that support down. I hope that they are providing their own support where needed.

The proposal starts with some exceptions from EU law on asylum procedures. Note that it does *not* provide for an exception from the basic rule that Member States must consider asylum applications made at the border.

The three Member States may set different modalities of support for the basic needs of asylum seekers, but this is *not* an exception from the whole reception conditions Directive, and there is still an explicit obligation to provide for basic needs in some form.

For failed asylum seekers, those Member States can derogate from the whole Returns Directive (which concerns the status and treatment of irregular migrants), but in fact certain parts of this Directive would still have to be complied with.

There would have to be procedural guarantees for the people concerned.

Part of the clause on support from Frontex. The proposal also includes support from the EU asylum agency and Europol.

It would apply for six months but could be extended or repealed. Also applies to those already on the territory or those still awaiting a decision when it expires.

Remember the Council can amend this proposal (or refuse to adopt it) - vote is by a qualified majority. The European Parliament is only consulted on such emergency measures.

The EU previously adopted emergency asylum laws re the perceived asylum crisis in 2015 and one of them was unsuccessfully challenged before the CJEU. The details are different but that judgment might be partly relevant by analogy.

My comments on that 2017 CJEU judgment upholding the legality of previous EU emergency asylum laws here: eulawanalysis.blogspot.com/2017/09/a-pyrr…

Again, the details of today's proposals are quite different, but at least some points in the earlier judgment might be relevant.