Saturday, June 3, 2023, Cologne, 2:00 PM Rudolfplatz

On 08 June, the EU interior ministers* want to vote on a far-reaching reform of the European asylum system. The goal of the „Common European Asylum System (CEAS)“ is to include far-reaching tightenings – and to push the brutal isolation policy of Fortress Europe even further.
All asylum seekers should already face detention at the EU’s external borders and have to file asylum applications there – under detention-like conditions and without access to and legal counsel. The „Erdogan deal“ of 2016 between the EU and Turkey is the inspiration for the concept. The notorious Moria camp on the Greek island of Lesbos and the other Greek hotspots serve as models; their inhumanity is to become the norm throughout the EU.

If deportation to a so-called „safe third country“ is possible, the asylum application will not even be examined. The list of so-called „safe third countries“ is to be extended once again for this purpose.

This is a further step towards the dehumanization of refugees. In fact, the individual right to asylum is to be abolished.

Borders kill, in the Mediterranean, in the EU-funded torture camps in Libya, in Belarus. Every day EU member states‘ border guards conduct illegal push-backs.

Short version:

• All over the external borders, refugees are to be interned in reception camps.
• People in a state of psychological emergency will be detained. Independent support will hardly be possible. Thus, the degrading conditions of Moria will become the normality at the EU external borders.
• In so-called „accelerated asylum procedures“ directly at the external borders, the reasons for flight are no longer to be examined, but only a place of deportation, a so-called „safe third country“, is to be found. Security does not have to be guaranteed in the whole country and is equated with minimal care.

In this way, governments are also trying to block the legal path to asylum. They are gearing up for the migration movement that is expected in the wake of the climate crisis, instead of challenging capitalism. The forced armament and walling off at the external borders are in line with the trend of right-wing populist development in Europe.

Despite clear violations of the Geneva Refugee Convention, human rights and contrary declarations of intent in the coalition agreement to „end the suffering at the external borders“, the german coaltion government supports the plans to abolish asylum rights in the EU.

On 03 June, we take to the streets in solidarity with all those seeking protection, against Fortress Europe, for freedom of travel & settlement and self-determination, and always anti-fascist.