AZIENDA ULSS 20 DI VERONA - ULSS 20 Verona

Introduction
The provision of healthcare for illegally staying third-country nationals varies in the different
Member States and in general, they have difficulty in accessing healthcare services. Furthermore,
due to their status, illegally staying third-country nationals often live in conditions of extreme
poverty without proper access to food and adequate shelter, which, coupled with the lack of access
to medical care, can have negative implications for their physical and mental state.
Moreover, persecution or traumatic experiences coupled with the experience of flight and rejected
asylum applications can leave people in a fragile state of mind leading also to mental health
problems. The likelihood and the scale of such negative consequences is greatly increased for
vulnerable persons 1 . Linguistic and cultural barriers can often further complicate the issue.
The extent of the problem is difficult to asses given that illegal staying immigrants, due to their
irregular status, fall outside the national records and information systems which only contain data
on citizens and legal residents.
However, at the moment when an illegally staying third-country national comes into contact with
the authorities in a host country in order to be retuned to their country of origin, either through a
voluntary or a forced procedure, their mental and physical well-being becomes the responsibility of
both the returning and receiving state under international humans rights law.
Indeed, when the idea for a common EU return policy was first being conceived, it was proposed
that such a policy should set basic requirements for the physical and mental capacity of the persons
concerned before embarking upon return. 2
However, in spite of the important piece of legislation that subsequently developed with the
adoption in December 2008 of the Directive 2008/115/EC on common standards and procedures in
Member States for returning illegally staying third-country nationals, there are still no clear
common guidelines at EU level on the provision of healthcare to returnees, either in terms of
whether care should be provided and how Member States should deal with returnees in case health
problems are identified.
Therefore, with a view to proposing recommendations for good practice in the provision of
healthcare to returnees, this report aims to address a number of key questions on this subject,
namely:
• What are the health concerns for returnees in all stages of the return process and how are
these concerns linked in to the issue of vulnerability?
• What are the obligations of the Member States in this regard in the framework of both the
developing EU immigration and return policy as well as in the in the context of international
human rights law?
• What are the current practices relating to the provision of healthcare to returnees both at the
level of individual member states and internationally as well as in which capacity (public,
private, NGO) ?
• In the return process, is the provision of healthcare considered by the country of origin and if
so how (component of readmission agreements between states, supported by international
organisations, ….etc)
1 Coehlo P. “The Return of Asylum Seekers whose applications have been rejected”, ECRE (2005)
2 Green Paper On A Community Return Policy on Illegal Residents – COM (2002) 175 final