Articles for author: Evelien Brouwer

EU’s AI Act and Migration Control. Shortcomings in Safeguarding Fundamental Rights

In the European Union, AI and non-AI technologies are increasingly being used for border and migration control. In this blog, Brouwer argues that the new AI Act, while adding safeguards, falls short of sufficiently protecting fundamental rights. This is due to its blanket exceptions and broad discretion for national and EU agencies to experiment with AI tools when making decisions about migrants, including asylum seekers and refugees. It is therefore important that the general legal framework on fundamental rights continues to be observed.

12. Dezember 2024

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Challenging Bias and Discrimination in Automated Border Decisions

In Ligue des droits humains, the Court of Justice of the European Union explicitly addresses the fact that the use of AI and self-learning risk models may deprive data subjects of their right to effective judicial protection as enshrined in the Charter. The importance of this judgment cannot be understated for non-EU citizens and at the European borders more generally.

11. Mai 2023

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Interoperability of Databases and Interstate Trust: a Perilous Combination for Fundamental Rights

On 14 May 2019, the Council adopted two regulations, Regulation 2019/817 and Regulation 2019/818, establishing a framework for the interoperability between EU information systems in the Area of Freedom, Security, and Justice. The new rules on interoperability, upon which the European Parliament agreed in April 2019, will allegedly provide for easier information sharing and ‘considerably improve security in the EU, allow for more efficient checks at external borders, improve detection of multiple identities and help prevent and combat illegal migration’. All this, according to the press release of the Council, ‘while safeguarding fundamental rights’. It is questionable whether this commitment made by the EU legislator is justified.

25. Mai 2019

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Schengen Entry Bans for Political Reasons? The Case of Lyudmyla Kozlovska

On 13 August 2018, Lyudmyla Kozlovska, an Ukrainian national and the President of the Open Dialog Foundation (ODF) in Poland, was detained at Brussels airport on the basis of a Polish entry ban reported into the Schengen Information System (SIS II). One day later, the Belgian border authorities deported her to Kiev, Ukraine. This case raises questions on the discretionary power of states to use the SIS II for entry bans on ‘unwanted migrants’ and the obligation of executing states, in this case Belgium, to check the legitimacy or proportionality of these other states decisions. Furthermore, this case illustrates the necessity of effective remedies against decisions reported in large-scale databases such as SIS.

30. August 2018

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