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The European Union is being sued for financing roadworks projects in Eritrea, a country where forced labor is used, amid calls by green MEPs to suspend funding.
Some 80 million euros of EU trust funds have been channeled into equipment and materials to renovate a road for a regime that forces people to work against their will in conditions described as equivalent to slavery.
The workers are part of Eritrea’s mandatory national service program, which brings together youth for totalitarian dictatorship under rebel leader-turned-president Isaias Afwerki.
On Wednesday (May 13), the Netherlands-based Eritrea Foundation for Human Rights sent the European Commission a detailed 33-page subpoena, in a case now to be heard in the Amsterdam district court.
The foundation will request a declaring order that the EU project is illegal, and a court order that the EU must stop supporting the project.
The Amsterdam court will present the documents on June 17, at which point the EU will have around six weeks to respond.
The European Commission told EUobserver that the scheme remains in line with EU standards, in projects and good financial management.
Meanwhile, thousands of Eritreans are said to have fled, and many seek asylum in Europe due to the regime’s national service. Nearly 114,000 asylum applications from Eritrea have been filed in the EU since 2015.
Party politics
The lawsuit comes amid allegations that the two largest political groups in the European Parliament are mocking demands to stop funding it.
“I pulled on a rope and by pulling on that rope I realized that the Commission is complicit in something that is inexcusable,” Michele Rivasi, a French green MEP told EUobserver.
Rivasi is the main MEP in a report by the European Parliament on how the European Development Funds are spent.
His report, which will be voted on in plenary on Thursday, is part of a so-called “discharge” by which the European Parliament accepts or rejects the EU’s budget lines.
Rivasi says that both the center-right European People’s Party (PPE) and the Socialists and Democrats are pressing to block his amendments that seek to stop EU involvement on the Eritrea highway.
“It is very political,” he said, noting that he had previously received backing support from all parties by failing to grant approval at the development committee level.
He noted that the European Commission also, during a hearing in the development committee in February, apologized for the mishandling of the project.
The PPE and socialists have since rebelled due to the loyalties of political parties, Rivasi said.
She says the socialists now refuse because they don’t want to embarrass Jutta Urpilainen, the European Commissioner for Development, who is herself from her parliamentary group.
“They have a commissioner who is a socialist and the socialists support the commissioner,” he said, noting that there are plans to send a MEP delegation to Eritrea in November.
National Service
The road in question aims to connect Ethiopia to the Massawa port of Eritrea and follows a 2018 peace declaration between former warring neighbors.
The national service was initially created as an emergency response to the threat of war with Ethiopia, but it still remains intact.
For its part, the European Commission contracted the project to the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) and affirms that the new path will boost economic growth and employment.
He says that the project and its activities are closely monitored.
“This regular monitoring has been ensured by the EU Delegation through various field missions,” he told EUobserver, noting that he also holds meetings with UNOPS and the Red Sea Trading Corporation.
The Red Sea Trading Corporation is Eritrea’s government purchasing agency.
But Human Rights Watch says monitoring on the ground is impossible.
“The kind of monitoring that would be required to ensure that EU money does not go indirectly or directly to ongoing human rights abuses is not feasible at this time in Eritrea,” said Laetitia Bader, Eritrea expert at Human Rights Watch
He noted that a similar case of human rights abuse and forced labor in Eritrea emerged in 2013 at a mineral mine partly owned by a Canadian company.
The Canadian Supreme Court in March ruled that the Canadian mining company can be sued in Canada for alleged abuses abroad.
The ruling is a precedent, which could be related to the most recent lawsuit filed against the European Union.
