EU sued for funding 'forced labor' on Eritrean highway
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The European Union is being sued for funding road works projects in Eritrea, a country where forced labor is used, amid calls by green MPs to suspend funding.
Some 80 million euros of EU trust funds have been earmarked for equipment and materials to renovate a road to a regime that forces people to work against their will under the conditions described. as equivalent to slavery.
The workers are part of the compulsory national service program of Eritrea, which brings together young people for a totalitarian dictatorship under the leadership of rebel leader-turned-president Isaias Afwerki.
On Wednesday 13 May, the Eritrean Foundation for Human Rights based in the Netherlands sent the European Commission a 33-page summons to appear in a case which must now be heard by the District Court of the Netherlands. ; Amsterdam.
The foundation will seek an order declaring that the EU project is illegal and a court order prohibiting the EU from supporting the project.
The Amsterdam court will present the documents on June 17, when the EU will have around six weeks to respond.
The European Commission has told EUobserver that the program remains in line with EU standards, in terms of projects and good financial management.
Meanwhile, thousands of Eritreans have reportedly fled and many of them are seeking asylum in Europe due to the national services of the regime.
Party politics
The trial comes amid allegations that the two largest political groups in the European Parliament are mocking requests to stop funding it.
"I pulled on a rope and by pulling on that rope, I realized that the Commission was complicit in something inexcusable," Michele Rivasi, a French green MEP.
Rivasi is the main MEP European Parliament report on how the European Development Funds are spent.
His report, which will be voted in plenary on Thursday, is part of a so-called "discharge" by which the European Parliament accepts or rejects EU budget lines.
Rivasi says the center-right European People's Party (EPP) and the Socialists and Democrats are pressuring to block his amendments that aim to stop EU participation on the road to Eritrea.
"It is very political," he said, noting that he had previously received support from all parties by not giving his approval at the development committee level.
He noted that the European Commission had also, at a hearing before the Development Committee in February, apologized for the mismanagement of the project.
The EPP and socialists have since rebelled due to the loyalty of political parties, said Rivasi.
She says the Socialists are now refusing because they don't want to embarrass Jutta Urpilainen, the European Development Commissioner, who is herself from his parliamentary group.
"They have a socialist commissioner and the socialists support the commissioner," he said, noting that there were plans to send a European Parliament delegation to Eritrea in November.
National service
The road in question aims to link Ethiopia to the port of Massawa in Eritrea and follows a 2018 declaration of peace between former neighbors at war.
The national service was originally created as an emergency response to the threat of war with Ethiopia, but it remains intact.
For its part, the European Commission has entrusted the project to the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) and says that the new path will stimulate economic growth and employment.
He says that the project and its activities are closely monitored.
"This regular monitoring has been provided 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 the government purchasing agency of Eritrea.
But Human Rights Watch says surveillance on the ground is impossible.
"The kind of monitoring that would be necessary to ensure that EU money is not indirectly or directly used for human rights violations is not possible for the human being. 39 right now in Eritrea, "said Laetitia Bader, an Eritrean human rights expert. Watch
He noted that a similar case of human rights violations and forced labor in Eritrea appeared in 2013 in a mining mine partly owned by a Canadian company.
In March, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Canadian mining company could be prosecuted in Canada for alleged abuses abroad.
The decision is a precedent, which could be linked to the latest lawsuit against the European Union.