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"In March 2016, EU leaders and Turkey issued a joint statement declaring that migrants travelling from Turkey to any Greek island would be returned back to Turkey. Following this, Greek authorities imposed a restriction of stay on all new arrivals, under which no-one could leave the islands, thus leaving thousands stranded. The number of asylum seekers soon exceeded the capacity of the Reception and Identification Centers (also known as hot-spots)."
"Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis should free hundreds of unaccompanied migrant children detained in unhygienic police cells and detention centers in Greece, Human Rights Watch said today in opening a campaign to free the children. Their release from abusive detention conditions would better protect them from infection amid the coronavirus pandemic."
"Europe’s coast guards and rescue agencies were at loggerheads Monday (13 April) about the fate of four dinghies and up to 85 migrants potentially lost at sea after setting off from Libya. Germany’s Sea-Watch International reported that the little rubber boats had been carrying 258 people."
"Like many unthinkable fiscal strategies brought forward by the chancellor in the past month, addressing structural inequities is now essential to fight this pandemic."
"Coronavirus crisis has led to billions of people around the world facing enhanced monitoring."
"The crisis triggered by COVID-19 is challenging the very meaning of coexistence and cohabitation and redesigning the boundaries of public space in an absolutely unprecedented way, with unpredictable results."
"Each time a crisis emerges, the law is entitled to seize the exceptional moment and contain it, within the limits of democracy and the rule of law. Legal normality, as a vague standard, is usually redefined by the legislator and the courts and rapidly adjusted to reality."
"Turkey is gathering a high number of migrants at its western coasts and urging them to sail across the sea border to neighbouring Greece, several Greek media reported over the weekend."
"Greek Migration Minister Notis Mitarakis said on Monday that, although migrants have started gathering along the Turkish coastline opposite the islands of the eastern Aegean, there are no indications that they are infected with coronavirus, as some media reports had suggested over the weekend."
"MEPs suggested on Thursday the use of new technologies to help member-states confront the technical and organisational challenges that will arise in societies, once the Covid-19 pandemic is contained."
"A migrant boat adrift in Malta’s search and rescue zone is taking in water with those on board in dire need of help, according to an NGO."
"Italy will transfer migrants from crowded rescue ship "Alan Kurdi" to another vessel where they would be kept in quarantine over coronavirus concerns, officials said. The privately owned ship has been stranded for days."
"The Council of Europe today called on its 47 member States to take a precautionary approach to the development and use of algorithmic systems and adopt legislation, policies and practices that fully respect human rights."
"Migration is a human and global phenomenon that will continue to be one of the central topics on the political agenda in the EU since the geopolitical circumstances in its closer and wider neighbourhood are becoming ever more complex"
"The pandemic is revealing the ways in which global health outcomes are shaped by race, class and indignity.(...)"
"To this end, the report describes the critical findings from the visits undertaken to the two largest remand prisons in the country in Athens and Thessaloniki and to three new prisons for sentenced prisoners as well as the Korydallos Prison Health Centre (former prison hospital). The report also makes a series of recommendations challenging the current approach towards the management of prisons."
"Restrictions on international and intra-EU traffic of persons have been at the heart of the political responses to the coronavirus pandemic. Border controls and suspensions of entry and exist have been presented as key policy priorities to prevent the spread of the virus in the EU. These measures pose however fundamental questions as to the raison d’être of the Union, and the foundations of the Single Market, the Schengen system and European citizenship. They are also profoundly intrusive regarding the fundamental rights of individuals and in many cases derogate domestic and EU rule of law checks and balances over executive decisions"
"The toolkit is designed to help ensure that measures taken by member states during the current crisis remain proportional to the threat posed by the spread of the virus and are limited in time."
Rapporteur Juan Fernando López Aguilar: "1.Rejects the Council draft; 2.Instructs its President to forward its position to the Council, the Commission and the national parliaments."
"These are turbulent times in Hungary, with a single political decision receiving massive international attention. It's not the first time Hungary has been in the headlines for government decrees that have raised eyebrows nationally and internationally. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has freely described his understanding of democracy as "illiberal," and refers to his decisions as "unorthodox.""
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