The small road that winds along the mountainside, overlooking the Mediterranean, Marouane Youssfi walks up it with regret, this April morning. He has just been away from France where he intended to go, boarding the train at dawn at Ventimiglia station, in Italy. The police checked the 28-year-old Moroccan at the first stop after the border, at Menton-Garavan station (Alpes-Maritimes).
With him, there are a handful of migrants – from Morocco but also from Tunisia, Egypt and Pakistan – who were arrested and brought to the Menton border post. Some of them want to go to Spain or the Netherlands. In a few hours, the police took their fingerprints, a photo and, realizing that they were in an irregular situation, they took them a few meters away, to the Italian police station. Return to sender.
“We’re going to try again”, promises Marouane Youssfi. The young man has nothing to lose. He has been in Europe since 2019, he failed to obtain asylum in Austria, then in Switzerland. He now wants to try his luck in France. Moreover, he allegedly told the French police officers that he wanted to seek international protection, without success.
New legal framework
A decision of the Council of State of February 2 nevertheless came to remind us of the legal framework which applies during internal border controls in the Schengen area, reestablished continuously since 2015. “When the person is neither an isolated minor nor an asylum seeker, we apply a readmission procedure to Italy”we summarize at the Ministry of the Interior.
Migrant defense associations hoped that the decision would be an opportunity to put an end to practices that they consider illegal and that the Defender of Rights denounces in a framework decision made public on Thursday April 25, such as refusals to register migrants. asylum applications or arbitrary deprivation of liberty. But almost three months have passed and they are doubtful.
“The procedures are more formal and take more time but some things have not changed, estimates Jacopo Colomba, of the NGO We World, who carries out daily observations at the Menton border. We are still preventing people from asking for asylum and we are still locking them up for several hours in prefabs without giving them access to their rights. » On the contrary, the Ministry of the Interior says that if people are not released after four hours, they are placed under the administrative detention regime. “The prosecution is then notified, people are offered the possibility of seeing a lawyer or a doctor”we assure Place Beauvau.
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