30
Juli
2024

Guidance on investigating alleged ill-treatment at borders

Fundamental rights violations on the EU’s land and sea borders often go unreported. Investigations into these violations need to be more effective. This report gathers examples of alleged rights violations of migrants and refugees between 2020 and 2023. It sets out 10 steps to promote prompt and effective national investigations into incidents of ill-treatment at borders.

This report presents data on national disciplinary and criminal investigations into rights violations against migrants and refugees at borders. It focuses specifically on those allegedly perpetrated during controls at the EU’s external land and sea borders. The report covers 2020 and 2023. Geographically, it covers the EU’s eastern land borders, the western Balkans, the Mediterranean and the English Channel.

Thematically, it covers allegations of failure to rescue people in distress at sea, physical ill-treatment and other forms of inhuman and degrading treatment during apprehensions and/or summary returns at borders. It also covers the abandonment of people in remote areas without basic amenities putting their life and physical integrity at risk. The report does not cover administrative procedures relating to asylum or return.

The report explains the duty to investigate reports of fundamental rights violations during border management, describes under-reporting and provides an overview of investigations. This overview is not comprehensive, as data about national investigations, particularly those closed at pretrial phase, are difficult to collect.

The report then analyses the effectiveness of national investigations, shedding light on existing challenges and gaps. This part of the report is primarily based on findings in European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) case-law. FRA complemented this with information provided by national human rights institutions and information obtained from organisations providing support or legal aid to refugees and migrants and from lawyers.

National case-law could be considered only to a limited degree, as cases are few and most are not publicly available. FRA did not have the benefit of reviewing investigation files to identify patterns, shortcomings and good practices.

This report is primarily addressed to Member States, as they bear the responsibility for prompt and effective investigations into actions that violate the fundamental rights safeguards set in EU law. They must do so while respecting the requirements of Article 47 of the charter. At the same time, the European Commission can play an important role in promoting effective national investigations.

This report is based on desk research and on the following data collection:

  • With the support of its national liaison officers, FRA requested from courts and/or public prosecutors overviews of pending and closed judicial cases. Cases concerned allegations of border management authorities committing criminal offences against migrants, asylum applicants and refugees.
  • FRA requested from the responsible ministries and/or law enforcement bodies overviews of disciplinary investigations on the same matter.
  • In 14 Member States, FRA’s multidisciplinary research network Franet consulted national human rights bodies, organisations providing support or legal aid to refugees and migrants, and lawyers.

The Franet field research covered Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Spain and Slovakia. Information from courts, prosecutors and national authorities was also sought from Estonia and Finland.