Pushbacks and Rights Violations at Europe’s Borders: The state of play in 2020

In this report, Refugee Rights Europe and the End Pushbacks Partnership present available evidence of unlawful pushbacks and severe rights violations at European borders. The evidence clearly indicates that illegal pushback operations are taking place across the EU, at internal and external land and sea borders. This phenomenon, it is argued, increasingly constitutes a systematic Europe-wide approach to migration governance.

The report thus highlights an uncomfortable truth: the Europe in which we now live is a place where displaced individuals are faced with brutal violence when they attempt to access EU territory, where people in distress at sea are attacked and fired at by EU coast guards in broad daylight, and where people fleeing war-torn countries are shot dead when attempting to cross EU borders. We thus call on European leaders to take action to put an end to these violations and hold perpetrators accountable.