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BRUSSELS – A group of Eritreans based in the Netherlands sued the European Union on Wednesday, demanding that it stop funding a project in the East African dictatorship that uses forced labor, said the lawyer representing the group, the first Evidence of an effort by individuals and organizations to hold the bloc accountable for the way it spends billions in Africa.
The lawsuit in the Netherlands, a member of the European Union that contributes directly to the financing of Eritrea and is home to a large number of Eritrean migrants, will soon be followed by similar legal action in Britain.
The Amsterdam-based group, Human Rights for Eritreans, accuses the European Union in the demand for funding A project that uses forced labor in a country that is known for trusting it, organizing money through a deliberately opaque process, and failing to provide meaningful oversight.
An unknown number of workers operating the team are forced recruits, caught up in the notorious, universal and open mandatory newsroom of their Eritrean population, a practice denounced by the European Union and which the United Nations said was “equivalent to slavery” .
The commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but defended the funding by saying that heavy equipment makes work for recruits lighter, and that it can effectively analyze the project despite being dependent on the Eritrean government. to access the construction. site.
The European Union has so far spent € 80 million, about $ 87 million, with € 120 million more on the way, all part of a $ 6 billion boat called the European Union’s Emergency Trust Fund for Africa, which will created in 2015 to pay for projects destined to to curb the migration of Africans to Europe by creating jobs at home.
The component of the Horn of Africa Fund “has no documented criteria for selecting project proposals and the European Court of Auditors also highlights serious shortcomings in terms of risk and performance assessment,” said Michèle Rivasi, a French member of the European Parliament. . “We have no information; the management of the Emergency Trust Fund for Africa should be more transparent. “
The fund is technically a separate entity from the main budget of the European Union, making it difficult to hold accounts. Critics, including rights advocates, migration, and legal experts and legislators, say the opacity is deliberate. The establishment of the fund was approved by European governments at the height of the migration crisis and is unusual, but not unique.
Emiel Jurjens, the Dutch lawyer who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Dutch group Eritrea, said the European Commission could argue that the Dutch courts had no jurisdiction and, if successful, could act with impunity. If the court’s challenges fail, he said, “it would create a bulletproof way for the commission to fund projects that are ethically difficult to defend from a human rights standpoint.”
The European Parliament will vote on Thursday on a motion to freeze such spending in Eritrea, arguing that the European Commission does not have genuine oversight of how the money is spent.
The Eritreans, who have historically been among the top nationalities of asylum seekers in Europe, have long fled to the Netherlands, Britain and other European nations, as their country, the underdog winner of a war of independence Against Ethiopia in the 1990s, it has grown into a hermetic dictatorship led by a former rebel, Isaias Afwerki, in the past two decades.
Ambassadors who visited the site in February were escorted by Eritrea government officials, and independent access is prohibited.
The United Nations Office for Project Services does not have an office in Asmara. When asked about the number of recruits at the construction site and their working conditions, the European Commission sent The Times a link to the page on the Eritrea Ministry of Information website, which described the terms of payment, license and work for recruits that could not be verified.
The Eritrean government, having said it would consider abolishing compulsory military service when peace is achieved with Ethiopia, has not done so, despite a 2018 deal that secured Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Nobel Peace Prize.
“The United States is under scrutiny at various levels, both close to home at the European Parliament level and beyond, with the filing of a lawsuit in the Netherlands. This can only be positive,” said Laetitia Bader, an expert in Eritrea from Human Rights Watch.
Habte Hagos, co-founder of the London-based Eritrea Focus group, the organization behind a British lawsuit, represented by Duncan Lewis Solicitors, left Eritrea for Britain when she was young. He expressed disbelief that the European Union was paying for a project that used recruits, and even more that his adoptive country was contributing.
“I find it absolutely shocking for the European Union, given its commitments to human rights, to get involved in this place where people are enslaved for years,” he said. “In terms of the UK, a country that banned slavery a long time ago, that seems like a double standard to me,” added Hagos.
