“Locked up and excluded: Informal and illegal detention in Spain, Greece, Italy and Germany” looks at how four EU member states’ practice of the administrative detention of non-nationals in 2019.

The report – in English & Spanish, with executive summaries in English and French – shows how, in both first arrival countries such as Italy, Greece and Spain, and in a presumed destination country, Germany, the detention of non-nationals is evolving, taking on new forms.

In particular, this report argues that in 2019, administrative detention was increasingly happening outside or at the margins of existing legal frameworks. We consider that locking migrants up without respecting or by bending existing legislations amounted to a generalisation of ad hoc and informal detention, and that it has led to the further deterioration of detention conditions.

The recent release of the New Pact on Migration and Asylum has triggered debates about whether this proposal by the European Commission will improve the situation of migrants and asylum seekers and the way migration is governed in the EU. This report shows that many of the practices proposed in the Pact are in fact already been taking place in member states, and that they are harmful for migrants and asylum seekers.