EU - Border externalisation

An overview of how the EU works extensively with non-EU countries to introduce biometric ID systems in order to "manage" migration and borders, and recommendations on possible ways to mitigate the risks

In early August, the African Union (AU) issued a statement condemning Denmark’s Aliens Act which, among other things, allows Demark to relocate asylum seekers to countries outside the European Union while their cases are being processed.

the AU says this is an “extension of the borders of such countries and an extension of their control to the African shores.””

Specifically, it is to allow member states to also monitor the secondary movements of irregular migrants who have not sought asylum and to use that information to help facilitate re-documentation and deportations.

According to the EU, the New Pact “paves the way towards a common EU system for returns (deportations)..” The same statement goes on to say that the current hurdles to deportations lie within the EU member states . As a result, the New Pact will be a first step towards the appointment of a European Return Coordinator, who will work closely with the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex), and will assist in the harmonisation of national legislation across EU member states on deportations.

Changes to Eurodac include an expansion of the scope of the system and to open the system’s fingerprint database to access by national law enforcement authorities and Europol. In addition to the above, the EU’s cross border IT agency, eu-LISA, is working on a Central Identity Repository (CIR) which is “designed to hold the records of 300 million people and will be the centerpiece of a new, integrated system that allows police forces across the EU to search and cross-check the records of immigrants and visitors from outside Europe.” The project is based in Tallinn, Estonia and is expected to be completed in 2023 at an estimated cost of US$190 million.

African states must provide all migrants with proof of legal identity and adequate documentation as a way to empower them to effectively exercise their human rights. This may be in the form of passports and not necessarily ID cards.

The EU has a primary role to ensure that it does not promote the unnecessary introduction of ID systems in situations where other, less intrusive, methods of migration “management” are possible. Instead, it should focus on the promotion and strengthening of democratisation and human rights protections. This can be achieved in part by strengthening laws or working with counterparts to introduce new ones that set out clear guidelines within which the government authorities may conduct surveillance activities.

Civil society in African countries must continue overseeing and input into these processes. Civil society should document the roll out of biometric ID systems that are introduced in order to promote better migration management and ensure it does not end up enabling state sponsored human rights violations

The current model used by the EU and its member states to manage migration amounts to an externalisation of EU policy to third countries. In most instances, this is done without due regard for the effect this will have in the long term protection and enjoyment of fundamental rights in third countries. This is a cause for concern in those countries that lack adequate national legal frameworks. The absence of these frameworks makes it easier to repurpose biometric ID systems that are initially set up to control migration.

That said, digital identity systems are problematic because they have the potential to exclude, surveille and exploit people especially when such systems are rolled out without fully assessing the consequences. More specifically, biometric data can easily be subjected to re-purposing. Whilst originally it may have been gathered for migration control purposes, it may later be used for law enforcement purposes. This phenomenon is known as “mission creep”. The merging of protection and law enforcement purposes at the expense of the former is also gaining traction in several jurisdictions. If data like photographs are collected in the enrolment or data collection of an ID scheme, even if it is not immediately used for purposes like facial recognition, the existence of the dataset means that it can be used for such in the future, as in the case of India adding facial recognition to its biometric systems.

EU bodies are equipping and training authorities, influencing laws, and developing mass-scale biometric databases in non-member countries; Security authorities are provided with digital tools of surveillance; This programme of outsourcing will be used to crush political and civil freedoms and undermine democracy without urgent reforms.

By equipping and training third country authorities, influencing laws, and developing mass-scale biometric databases in neighbouring countries, the EU is providing authorities with digital tools of surveillance in the hope they will use them to stop people reaching the Union’s borders.

In Libya, more than €42 million was allocated from the Trust Fund for Africa for a border control project in 2019, which included the provision of patrol boats, SUV vehicles workstations, radio-satellite communication devices, and other equipment to coast guard authorities in Libya as well as the Directorate for Combatting Illegal Migration.