DB Audio 29 May 2025

European Union leaders are once again trying to wreck the right to seek asylum.

There’s a lot of shouty-headed nonsense in media and politics about asylum these days. So, before we get into the details, let’s first get the basics straight.

Everyone has the right to seek asylum in another country.

This does not mean that anyone can just live wherever they want. No. It means you have the right to ask for asylum, and authorities have to consider your individual case. It also means authorities have to treat you humanely throughout the process.

This is grounded in international human rights and refugee law, and, in the European Union, in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

In recent years, however, governments have been trying to dismiss their legal responsibilities in a number of ways. One way has been attempting to send asylum seekers to other countries.

It’s a dangerous policy idea that returns relentlessly and mindlessly, again and again, like some undead creature in a horror movie. Human rights groups and courts keep trying to kill it, and it keeps getting up off the floor to threaten more lives.

Last week, the European Commission published the latest such proposal. It would allow EU member states to send asylum seekers to countries with which they have no connection.

It does this by reinterpreting the concept of a “safe third country.”

Currently, under EU asylum law, a member state can declare an asylum claim inadmissible by saying the person could or should have sought or received protection in a “safe third country,” outside the EU. However, to do so there had to be some kind of a connection between the person and that third country. The new proposal would scrap the need for any connection at all.

This means an EU country could force people to go someplace halfway around the world where they’ve never even been. Where they don’t speak the language. Where they have no cultural ties, no family, no community.

The new proposal does say such arrangements with third countries would have to respect human rights.

But this promise means little coming from the EU and its member states. These are, after all, the same governments that have for years been helping send migrants and asylum seekers to Libya, where they face torture.

The European Commission’s plan threatens to eviscerate the right to seek asylum in the European Union.

There is some hope, however. The new proposal is just that: a proposal. The European Parliament and EU governments can still reject it.

If they care at all about human rights, they should.