ELIL - Legal Assistance at EU borders

As Europe’s asylum landscape shifts, we continue to confront urgent challenges and moments of hope. Over the past months, our team at ELIL has seen how fragile asylum protections can be. In Poland, a deeply troubling case made this painfully clear: an unaccompanied child, represented by ELIL, was forcibly returned to Belarus, despite an explicit order from the European Court of Human Rights. This breach of international law underscores a pattern we’re seeing across our work: the erosion of fundamental rights, especially for those most vulnerable.If you want to read more, you can find our press release here.

Yet amid this harsh reality, we’re also reminded of what’s possible when legal assistance is available and accessible.

At the end of 2024, a mother living in a refugee camp in Greece called our duty phone. She was raising three children alone, and desperately trying to reunite with her husband and teenage son in another EU country. She believed the family reunification process had already started. In fact, it hadn’t.

Our team immediately got to work. We helped her gather the necessary documents, contacted her family, clarified procedures, and ensured every step was completed on time. Weeks later, her application was approved. Earlier this year, the family was reunited.

This is what independent, free legal assistance can achieve: protection, dignity and family unity.

Your support helps us continue this work. Since the start of 2025, we’ve assisted over 3,100 people, 2,000 in Greece and 1,100 in Poland. We’ve worked in complex and shifting contexts.

Across all locations, funding cuts are threatening the future of legal assistance Major NGOs are scaling down or closing programs. Meanwhile, new political developments are putting even more pressure on the system.

Despite it all, our lawyers remain resilient and ready. Together with you, we’re standing up for the right to asylum, even when it’s under threat.

Thank you for being part of this work.

The ELIL team