On 10 October, Amnesty International issued a letter to High Representative Josep Borrell and EU Ministers of Foreign Affairs ahead of their emergency meeting in relation to the horrific events unfolding in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Responding to the awarding of the 2023 Václav Havel Prize to Turkish prisoner of conscience, Osman Kavala, by the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for Europe, Dinushika Dissanayake, said:
A new investigation into the global surveillance crisis by the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) media network, with technical assistance from Amnesty International’s Security Lab, today begins to reveal the shocking truth about how far the industry’s tentacles have spread and how ineffective EU regulation has been in controlling it.
Responding to the news that EU leaders have agreed a position on how to deal with sudden increases in arrivals at Europe’s borders, as well as cases of so-called ‘instrumentalisation’ of migrants, that would allow EU members states to deviate from the bloc’s usual asylum and reception standards, Eve Geddie, Director of Amnesty International’s EU office said:
Amnesty International and 26 other humanitarian, human rights, and refugee rights organisations welcome the decision of the Justice and Home Affairs Council of the European Union to extend the Temporary Protection Directive for refugees fleeing Ukraine for an additional year, until 4 March 2025.
The European Union’s bodies are currently engaging in the final stage of negotiations on the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act). As representatives of civil society organizations committed to upholding and monitoring the rule of law and democracy in the European Union, we call on legislators to ensure that the AI Act is fully coherent with rule of law standards, including transparency, accountability, and access to justice. Given the current decline of the rule of law in Europe, and the heightened concern over AI’s misuse, the Union cannot afford to miss this crucial opportunity and should introduce strong safeguards to protect the full respect of human rights and the rule of law.
The European Union (EU) must ban dangerous, AI-powered technologies in the AI Act, Amnesty International said today, as the bloc aims to finalize the world’s first comprehensive AI rulebook this fall.
On 26 September 2023, Amnesty International called on High Representative Josep Borrell to lead on an ambitious European Union (EU) response to human rights violations in the conflict in Sudan.
Six young people from Portugal will present a landmark case before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) tomorrow, 27 September, arguing that countries are breaching their human rights by failing to do enough to protect them from climate change.
As interinstitutional negotiations on the European Commission’s proposal for a Directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence reach a crucial phase, Amnesty International and 11 other civil society organisations call on the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of the EU to find meaningful compromises, to ensure that the Directive truly serves the needs of all survivors/victims of violence against women and girls and domestic violence, advances the achievement of gender equality and the effective protection of victims’ rights in the European Union, and recognizes the essential role of civil society organisations in ensuring prevention, protection, and direct support services for victims.
As the representatives of so-called “Team Europe” were shaking Tunisian President Kais Saied’s hand this July, hundreds of refugees and migrants were stranded in the country’s desert border areas with Libya, after its security forces rounded them up and abandoned them there without access to food, water or shelter.