The Lithuanian law introduced in response to migrants coming from Belarus last year, which orders the automatic detention of people who cross irregularly into the country and denies the right to asylum,  is incompatible with EU law, the Court of Justice found on Thursday.

Following the surge in migrants crossing the border between Lithuania and Belarus in the summer of 2021, Lithuania began to use pushbacks and other methods, claiming that the influx in migrants was a threat to security.

At the time, the EU’s chief diplomat Joseph Borrell accused Belarus of using illegal migrants as a “political weapon” to put pressure on the EU because of the bloc’s sanctions on Minsk.

Belarus denied this and has urged the EU to take in the migrants.

On Thursday, the court in Luxembourg condemned Lithuania for its decision to detain the asylum seeker known as MA after he crossed the Lithuanian border, saying that the state denying the applicant’s right to asylum violated EU law, including the bloc’s Fundamental Rights Charter.

“An applicant for international protection can be detained only when, after an individual assessment of each specific case, it becomes necessary, and if it is not possible to use milder measures,” the court’s press release reads.

The EU court also criticised Lithuania for using the security threat argument when making decisions.

“A threat to national security or public order can be used as a justification for detention only if a person’s behaviour causes a real, present, and sufficiently large threat to the fundamental public interest or to the internal or external security of the Member State concerned,” the press release also said.

On Monday (27 June) Amnesty International released a report that detailed abuses against people who crossed into Lithuania from Belarus, documenting multiple human rights violations by Lithuanian authorities in 2021-2022.

Following the Luxembourg court’s decision, Nils Muižnieks, Amnesty International’s Europe Regional Director, encouraged Lithuanian authorities to offer access to fair asylum procedures to all who express a need to gain international protection.

“The Lithuanian authorities must also end their cruel practice of automatically detaining refugees and migrants. Today’s judgement confirmed that depicting detention as ‘temporary accommodation’ or even an ‘alternative to detention’ does not allow any derogation from the obligation to respect refugees and migrants’ rights against arbitrary detention,” he said in a statement published Thursday.

Source: Euractiv.com