In today’s State of the European Union (SOTEU) address, President von der Leyen announced plans for a new European Emergency Response Framework.
“Children happen to be migrants, they are not migrants who happen to be children. Any emergency response mechanism must be built on that fundamental principle. The Commission says it will never compromise on protecting borders. We say the EU should never compromise on protecting children. Flexibility in applying the rules must never mean flexibility on children's rights. It cannot justify practices that put a child at risk of harm or breach their fundamental rights, at the border or anywhere else.” Federica Toscano, Senior Advocacy Advisor - Children on the move, Save the Children Europe
Our key asks:
Do not adopt any framework that suspends the right to ask for asylum and the child specific safeguards. The European Commission must stay away from any proposal that allows member states to suspend registration, reception or asylum procedures for children, including under the label of "instrumentalisation" or crisis response.
EU institutions must guarantee that every child is treated first as a child, in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the best interests principle, and fully implement the child-specific safeguards of the Pact on Migration and Asylum without exception.
Respond to arrivals with protection. The numbers do not justify a “crisis” response: around 22,000 unaccompanied children arrived in Europe seeking protection last year, while most children seeking protection were under 14. Europe can manage these arrivals with a properly resourced, child-centred response that provides safe and legal routes to protection.
“Suspending asylum rules and safeguards does not make asylum management more efficient. It just strips away the safeguards standing between a child and harm. In an emergency, children deserve stronger, faster, and more efficient safeguards, and right guarantees” Federica Toscano, Senior Advocacy Advisor - Children on the move, Save the Children Europe
Our position
Under mounting political pressure, the Commission proposes a new European Emergency Response Framework, meant to allow “flexibility of standard procedures”. Save the Children warns that such flexibility might erode safeguards negotiated for years and in force for barely two months. Whether through suspending asylum procedures or reinforcing a security-first approach to border management, either path treats children as a threat to be managed rather than as children first, in direct contradiction with child rights obligations. Any credible European emergency response framework must put children's rights first, delivering concrete protection through swift guardian appointments, effective vulnerability assessments and adequate reception capacity. Civil society must be an integral part of the framework, as civil society has provided crucial support to vulnerable people arriving, resources, expertise and equipment to welcome and assist the most vulnerable, but has also been instrumental to provide scrutiny and hold institutions to account when standards fall short.
We have already seen where migration control leads when it comes at the expense of child rights safeguards and child protection: Dozens of children have suffered in a hidden zone of violence at the Poland-Belarus border, after states there passed laws permitting pushbacks. Almost all children arriving in Europe through the Balkan route are victims of abuse and violence. Children in Ceuta are still stuck in a small territory without sufficient resources, many of them still living on the streets and exposed to violence.
We call on the European Parliament and member states to reject any legislative follow-up to today's speech that weakens child rights safeguards, and on the Commission to recommit to put all children first.
