"The Commission rightly focuses on fixing the EU’s broken asylum system and expanding safe and legal channels," Human Rights Watch Europe and Central Asia Acting Deputy Director Judith Sunderland stated.
However, the proposed measures contain few new and specific elements, and what they do have "would punish asylum seekers and refugees and curtail their rights," Sutherland added.
Earlier in the week, the European Commission released a communication proposing new asylum measures to restrict and even punish undocumented migrants in order to deter asylum seekers access to the European Union.
Moreover, the measures seek to build on the centralized system to assign EU member states responsibility for asylum seekers, despite their first country of arrival "on the basis of criteria such as relative size, wealth and absorption capacity of each country."
Over the course of the last year, Europe has been grappling with a massive migrant crisis, as hundreds of thousands of individuals flee the Middle East and North Africa to escape cinflict and poverty. The majority of migrants arrive in the European Union by sea, entering EU-member states Greece and Italy, and less so via land they enter Bulgaria.
