At least 142 people criminalised for helping migrants in Europe in 2024

Between January and December 2024, at least 142 people faced judicial proceedings in the EU for helping migrants. The majority were charged with facilitation of entry, stay or transit or migrant smuggling (depending on how the crime is defined in the national legislation). The figures stem from media monitoring and research conducted by the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM) throughout 2024.

This is most likely an undercount, as statistical and official data concerning those who are being accused, charged, or convicted for smuggling and related offences is often lacking. Many cases go unreported by the media or because people fear retaliation, especially migrants themselves. In addition, some cases reported by the media might not have been detected by our alert system.

Nonetheless, this data confirms a concerning, ongoing trend observed in previous reports. At least 117 people were criminalised in the EU in 2023. At least 102 in 2022, and at least 89 between January 2021 and March 2022.

Silvia Carta, Advocacy Officer at PICUM and author of the study, said: “This is the fourth year in a row that we document increasing levels of criminalisation of both migrants and people who help them. And what we’re able to monitor is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Our media monitoring found that most people criminalised were in Greece (62), Italy (29), Poland (17) and France (17). Other cases were found in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Malta, and Latvia.

Among those criminalised, 88 people were criminalised for rescuing or helping migrants in distress at sea. 21 were criminalised for providing food, water or clothing to migrants; 17 for protests and manifestations. For instance, in Poland, five people providing humanitarian aid at the Poland-Belarus border are facing potential sentences of up to five years in prison.

The average length of the proceedings recorded by our media monitoring is three years, but in several cases the actual length can be much longer. In one case that resulted in an acquittal in 2024, a woman faced nearly ten years of legal proceedings after being criminalised in 2014 for purchasing train tickets for a group of Syrian refugees in Sicily, Italy.

In 2024, court proceedings concluded for 43 of the 142 individuals criminalised. Among them, the vast majority of people (41) were acquitted or had their charges dropped. Even if a case may end in an acquittal, trials still have heavy consequences on people’s finances, personal life, and psychological wellbeing.

People criminalised for crossing borders irregularly

Not only solidarity with migrants is being criminalised under counter-smuggling legislation, but also the very act of migrating. According to our monitoring, between January 2024 and December 2024, at least 91 people in Italy, Greece and Spain were criminalised for the sole act of crossing borders irregularly.

People who are criminalised for migrating irregularly are punished twice: they face harsh legal proceedings and, in two thirds of cases, are imprisoned even before their trial begins. In Italy, Maysoon Majidi, a Kurdish-Iranian activist and filmmaker, spent 300 days in pre-trial detention on trafficking charges because she had distributed water to passengers on a boat.

This contrasts sharply with criminalisation of solidarity cases involving EU nationals, where pre-trial detention is rarely applied.

Silvia Carta said: “The criminalisation of solidarity with migrants is deeply tied with the criminalisation of migration itself. These are not two separate issues but are in fact a continuum of restrictive migration policies that make border crossing unsafe and create a hostile environment against those who are considered to have entered in an irregular manner.”

Most people facing criminal charges due to crossing borders irregularly (84%) are accused of steering a boat or driving a vehicle across a border, or of allegedly assisting in managing passengers on board. Often, the person was simply a passenger, or distributed food and water, used a phone and a map while at sea, or even helped others in difficult situations, for instance when a boat was about to capsize.

In Greece, an Egyptian fisherman and his 15-year-old child were charged with smuggling, simply because the father reluctantly agreed to pilot their boat to afford the journey. The father was placed in pre-trial detention and sentenced to 280 years in prison. Not only was the child separated from his father, but he now also faces the same charges in a juvenile court.

In both Italy and Greece, shipwreck survivors were prosecuted as smugglers.

The new EU Facilitation Directive

Criminalisation trends are likely to worsen due to a proposal to revise the current EU legislation on migrant smuggling (EU Facilitation Directive). The proposal from the European Commission, currently under negotiation in the European Parliament, leaves the door open to the criminalisation of humanitarian assistance and could expand the grounds for criminalising migrants.

Silvia Carta said, “The proposed Facilitation Directive risks leading to more people being arrested or brought to trial for helping people in need, and to migrants themselves being accused of smuggling. As the negotiations advance, the European Parliament must push for the strongest safeguards so that no one faces prosecution simply because they crossed a border or helped people in need”.

NOTES TO THE EDITORS:

• The report is available here. It includes the full list of monitored cases, detail on the most significant cases and more information on counter-smuggling legislation.
• In addition to criminalisation cases against individual human right defenders, activists and people crossing borders, the report also includes additional cases of administrative sanctions and non-judicial harassment of NGOs.
• The draft EU Facilitation Directive is a set of measures announced by the European Commission in November 2023, which aim at countering migrant smuggling. The measures focus on criminalising and punishing so-called smugglers (often, migrants themselves) without tackling the root causes of smuggling (i.e. the lack of safe regular routes for people to come to Europe). The new proposal, largely validated by the EU Council in December 2024, fails to introduce a clear and binding exception from criminalisation for humanitarian assistance by NGOs, family members or migrants themselves. Our position on the proposal can be found here.