International Conference SAF / AED on the 23rd and 24th of September 2016
Free movement within Europe … this ideal seems to be receding day by day, European governments are unable to implement a common policy for the accommodation of migrants and are taking instead increasingly hard and inhumane measures of expulsion and repression.
Faced with the Europeanization of restrictive migration policies, lawyers from different countries of the European Union need to discuss the situation in different areas in Europe as well as to exchange on their strategies and reflect on common European defence of migrants so that solutions may actually emerge, which are respectful of the rights and freedoms of migrants.
Every year, the SAF (Union of French Lawyers) organizes a symposium on a theme regarding migrants’ rights. Faced with the accelerated degradation of the situation of migrants in Europe, this year a major European conference has been organized in collaboration with the Association of European Democratic Lawyers.
What are the rights of migrants? What are the legal and social conditions at the gates of Europe? How to ensure that they can effectively assert their rights, file asylum applications or receive respectful conditions of accommodation, which conform to European standards of minimum guarantees for hosting asylum seekers?
The interventions of European lawyers, and the discussions that follow, will attempt to answer these questions while analysing various situations in Europe, particularly in Calais, Spain, Greece, Italy and, of course, in Turkey. This will enable participants to acquire the legal tools and knowledge of the concrete situations of migrants with the aim of improving their defence.