In adopting two funds last week on asylum, migration and ‘border management’, the European Parliament has effectively backed actions that will lead to violations of fundamental.

The Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund and Integrated Border Management Fund leave substantial risks of rights violations within and beyond EU borders, represent a key source of funding for private security companies and fund detention centres and forced returns.

With Frontex, the EU’s border control agency holding unprecedented power and a budget set to double amid rising controversy; civil society groups have documented thousands of human rights violations against migrants and refugees at the EU’s borders, including violent pushbacks and complicity with the deaths of thousands in the Mediterranean.

Still, the Parliament this week voted through these funds at a cost of €16bn over the next 7 years.

For Left MEP Clare Daly (Independents for Change, Ireland), the Integrated Border Management Fund “will reinforce Europe’s capacities for carrying out checks and surveillance at the external borders. It will fund security research projects, which will inevitably see the same arms companies that profit so handsomely from the wars that drive people from their homes profit again with EU funding for ‘security research’ on how to keep those people from entering Fortress Europe. It will fund border control cooperation with third countries, which, as we’ve seen with Libya, is an absolute disaster. It will funnel even more money towards a Frontex already bloated with cash and which has a documented history of rights violations. This fund will support actions that will lead to gross violations of fundamental rights not only in the EU but also in third countries, and will represent a key source of funding for private security companies.”