Belgium under barrage of lawsuits for failing to house migrants

Good morning and welcome to Europe Express.

Belgian authorities have been dragging their feet in recent months over a worsening crisis: thousands of asylum seekers sleeping rough. I’ll bring you the latest on legal action brought today against Belgium and what the people concerned have to say.

We’re also looking at the European Commission’s latest thinking on Russian fertilisers and why some critics want this sanctions carve-out to be dropped.

And we’ll get the Netherlands’ two cents on the upcoming revision of the EU’s fiscal rules.

Scabies and malnutrition

During the 2015 migration crisis, I interviewed people camped outside Belgium’s asylum registration office, where volunteers had set up a whole operation — showers, a soup kitchen, tents, mattresses, hygiene kits. The situation was not ideal. But after a few days sleeping in a tent, people would file their asylum application and move into proper housing.

Fast forward to 2022 and the picture is much bleaker. Thousands of people who do not possess a Ukrainian passport and seek asylum in Belgium have been sleeping on the streets of Brussels for months, even after having been registered. They come from all over the world and are predominantly male, as women and children are prioritised when being granted shelter. (Ukrainians are not affected because they are granted temporary protection and do not have to go through the asylum process.)

Voyaach Helpdesk, a pro-bono legal aid initiative involving major law firms, was set up in April to help asylum seekers fight for their rights in court. But even as most lawsuits were successful, the waiting times for a spot in a refugee centre have increased from 10 days in spring to several months now.

“We have to continue: we see our role mainly in keeping the pressure on the Belgian government to respect the rule of law and human dignity,” said Ana Sofia Walsh, a lawyer with Fragomen who takes part in the Voyaach Helpdesk.

Other lawyers involved in that initiative have lodged complaints with the UN and the European Commission accusing Belgium of being in breach of international and EU law. In the complaints, seen by Europe Express, they equate these living conditions to inhumane treatment, quoting medical professionals who found signs of malnutrition and an outbreak of scabies due to a lack of hygiene.

Corneille Tuyisenge, a Rwandan asylum seeker who first arrived in Belgium six months ago, told Europe Express he dreaded the onset of winter, as his first appointment at the asylum office is on December 7. “Even to get registered was very hard. I slept in front of the office to be first in line when they opened but they kept skipping me for days,” he said.

In one recent case, “two Syrian men were granted refugee status and they are still sleeping rough”, said Jean-François Gerard, a lawyer with Freshfields active in the Legal Helpdesk.

The complaints to the EU and UN are on behalf of 107 plaintiffs who are all still on the streets despite having received favourable rulings, which come with a €1,000 fine for every day the order is not enforced. None of those fines have yet been paid.

The Brussels court that has jurisdiction in these cases recently said that since January it had ruled in favour of some 4,500 plaintiffs (there is no class action possible in this area), compared with around 80 cases a year in previous years.

Belgian prime minister Alexander De Croo told Europe Express that his country “is creating extra shelters as we speak, mainly through the military”. But he noted that recruiting staff to run these shelters takes time.

“Of course, Belgium will do the necessary and its utmost to comply with international obligations, but our resources are not infinite,” De Croo added.

Chart du jour: Tightening the belt

European consumers’ intentions of spending on major goods, such as cars and houses, are at their lowest levels for two decades, excluding the early months of the pandemic.

Bad chemistry

Another piece of European Commission guidance; another bubbling row over whether the bloc is pulling its punches on Russia sanctions. This time we’re talking fertilisers, write Henry Foy in Brussels and Andy Bounds in Prague.

“Given the high sensitivity of food security concerns,” the EU “has essentially carved out” Russian fertilisers from the sanctions, reads a draft guidance to be released on November 9 and seen by Europe Express. The exemption allows fertilisers to be transported across EU territory, with EU financing and insurance, to their buyers.

Critics of the text argue that the commission, frightened of being blamed by Russian propaganda for high fertiliser prices that have exacerbated a global food crisis, is going too far in waving through these lucrative Russian exports. Going soft, they say, only reinforces the Kremlin narrative that it was the EU sanctions in the first place that caused the food and fertiliser shortages — rather than Vladimir Putin’s war.

This school of thought cites three facts: Russia is a small supplier of fertiliser to poorer countries (just 4 per cent of its exports last year went to African countries); Russia can easily avoid the EU by exporting fertilisers from its Ust-Luga port on the Baltic; and if Moscow wants to restore prewar export levels, it can just end the war.

EU sanctions are there to cripple Russia’s economy, they argue, and should be tightened in order to do so, not watered down.

“The most dangerous thing of all is that the commission is falling into the trap of Russia’s narrative,” said one EU official. “That if Russian fertilisers were not sanctioned, there would be no food crisis.”

Russia hawks are unlikely to be alone in their irritation: Europe’s farmers will also be disappointed if there are no revisions.

The draft guidance recaps existing support measures such as subsidies and attempts to bring down gas prices. But there are no fresh policies, save a demand for member states to ensure “undisrupted” supplies to fertiliser factories in the event of gas rationing.

The draft also rules out removing anti-dumping duties on liquid fertiliser imports from the US and Trinidad and Tobago, two of the biggest producers. Copa-Cogeca, the farmers’ union, had asked for them to be dropped.

Holding the line

EU member states are stepping up their lobbying efforts as the commission prepares to launch its long-awaited plan to overhaul the EU’s debt and deficit rules, writes Sam Fleming in Brussels.

The latest intervention comes from Sigrid Kaag, the Dutch finance minister, who has written to executive vice-president Valdis Dombrovskis urging the commission not to be soft on enforcement.

At stake is an overhaul that would permit capitals to agree multiyear, country-specific plans for getting their debt burdens under control. The Netherlands, one of the more hawkish member states, has made it clear it is willing to move away from the EU’s current, rather rigid debt-reduction framework but that it requires stricter oversight by Brussels in return.

In her letter, seen by Europe Express, Kaag says that in future there should be clear criteria for the suspension of fiscal rules in a crisis. Brussels should also specify the mitigating factors it can use in determining whether deficits are excessive. It should also keep a closer watch on small deviations from the budget rules, which can start to add up to a big problem.

“Enhancing the compliance and oversight of the rules is an important precondition for a successful review,” Kaag writes. “Changes to the economic governance framework that focus only on upward economic convergence and debt sustainability will fall short of the ambitions that we should have.”

What to watch

1. Denmark holds general election today

2. MEPs from the spyware inquiry committee are in Cyprus today and tomorrow, in Greece on Thursday and Friday

Notable, Quotable

Germany no longer perceives and respects Switzerland as a neutral country

• Swiss-German strife: German politicians have called for an end to arms deals with Switzerland as a political dispute deepens over Bern’s refusal to allow arms to be shipped to Ukraine.

• Elusive benchmark: The energy regulator charged with the design of a new EU benchmark for imported gas has admitted that it cannot tell whether the benchmark would be accepted by markets.