Photo: The spread of the deadly Mati fire in 2018, as it was simulated by the IRIS 2.0 rapid response forecast system.- Source: Meteo.gr, 2021

In the space of just 13 days in July 2023, 470,000 acres of Greek forest were burnt to ashes. Greece’s state machinery is proving inadequate to deal with extreme weather phenomena. In Rhodes, 15% of the entire island was ravaged in the worst fire in decades. From 1 January to 1 August 2023, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), a total of 550,000 hectares were burnt in the 22 largest forest fires. This is more than four times the average amount of land burnt in the years 2006-2022.

In an earlier survey by MIIR in collaboration with WWF on the economics of forest-fire protection we showed that, for the period 2016-2020, only 16.05% of public funds for fire protection were spent on fire prevention. Most, 83.95%, was spent on fire suppression. This ratio has not changed significantly since then: the Greek state has continued to invest in suppression instead of prevention. Another major problem can be found in the state’s inadequate use of scientific data during the fire season.

A typical case is the notorious fire-risk forecast map, which is published daily at 12.30pm by the General Secretariat of Civil Protection, in a rather opaque manner. This map is reproduced by all the media and forms the basis of the national Fire Service’s operational planning. It started to be used in 2003 and is published daily from 1 June to 31 October each year, under the purview of the Civil Protection. However, for twenty years now, none of the experts has known exactly what data and scientific methodology is used to produce this map.

Photo: The Civil Protection’s fire risk forecast map for 18 July, the day the huge fire broke out in Rhodes. The risk level for the island and the rest of the Dodecanese region was placed in the middle of the scale, which is classified as “high”. – Source: Ministry of Climate and Civil Protection.

 Intuition instead of data

“The map circulated by the Civil Protection, whose derivation we do not know, has no scientific sources, does not mention how the different categories are regulated, nor what it takes into account. My assessment is that the Civil Protection map comes out on the basis of simple intuition,” says Kostas Lagovardos, meteorologist and research director at the National Observatory of Athens.

The map’s first drawback, according to experts, is this lack of clarity about the exact scientific data used.

The main problem, however, is that it is issued once a day (covering the next 24 hours) and so does not take into account the very frequent variations in weather conditions during the day. As confirmed in a circular of the Civil Protection, once the map is issued, it does not change in any way.

 Photo: Excerpt from the Circular of the Ministry of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection on the issue
daily Fire Risk Prediction Map from the G.G.P.P. during the 2023 fire season.

Andrianos Gourbatsis, a lieutenant-general and former deputy chief of the Fire Service, explains: “This is a big mistake, because the meteorological data may get worse, it may get better, so how is it possible not to change the map? What if you issue a hazard index of 3 for tomorrow, and suddenly in the evening the wind comes in, the temperature drops and the hazard becomes 5? This is the biggest disadvantage. There is another issue: the people who issue the map every noon then proceed to get off work, they go home, they do not follow the meteorological data of the National Weather Service.”

Another shortcoming of the map is that it treats entire regions, prefectures and other subdivisions as single units, without taking into account their different climatic conditions as pertaining to fire.

Kostas Lagovardos explains: “On the map, every region has one colour, which has no bearing on reality. For example, the winds in southern Crete are much stronger and have no relation to the winds in northern Crete. So in heavy weather, which is a typical summer event, you have a huge difference in the pyro-meteorological situation within the same prefecture. You can’t have entire regions having the same level of alert everywhere.” This means a dispersal of the firefighting forces on the ground, with all the devastation that might result.

After all, this fire-risk map is directly connected to the operational plan for fighting fires.

In the catastrophic fire in Mati in 2008 (which killed 102 people), the fire-risk map indicated a level of 4 (the maximum is 5). Andrianos Gourbatsis, who is also knowledgeable about the fires in Mati (2018) and Varibobi (2021), elaborates: “The conditions were for an index of 5 at the time. With an index of 4, the Fire Service’s state of readiness was not the maximum. If it had been 5, the Fire Service would have brought out an additional 25 units, from the 86 it had, while more fire stations would have been staffed for more hours, i.e. people would have been more ready.”

The Civil Protection’s Fire Risk Forecast Map for 23 July 2018, the day the deadly fire broke out in Mati. Source: Ministry of Climate and Civil Protection.

In the catastrophic fire in Mati in 2008 (which killed 102 people), the fire-risk map indicated a level of 4 (the maximum is 5). Andrianos Gourbatsis, who is also knowledgeable about the fires in Mati (2018) and Varibobi (2021), elaborates: “The conditions were for an index of 5 at the time. With an index of 4, the Fire Service’s state of readiness was not the maximum. If it had been 5, the Fire Service would have brought out an additional 25 units, from the 86 it had, while more fire stations would have been staffed for more hours, i.e. people would have been more ready.”

When there is a category 4 or 5 risk in an area, the Fire Service must effect an aerial surveillance. If the patrol sees a fire, the Fire Service must intervene immediately. In the catastrophic fire in Varibobi in the summer of 2021, two Air-Tractors were patrolling the area from 11 am because of the danger index. Gourbatsis notes that “Mr Hardalias [deputy minister for civil protection at the time] gave an order for them to land at 13.00 and stand by ‘if needed’. The fire in Varypobi subsequently broke out a kilometre from the airport. The planes had been on standby for 20 minutes, and precious time was lost as they got back in the air.”

Civil Protection ignoring the National Observatory

Phoebus Theodorou was for years the person who signed off on the maps of the General Secretariat of Civil Protection. He is a forester, not a meteorologist. He retired some time ago, but according to MIIR’s information, he remains an advisor to the Ministry of Climate and Civil Protection and continues to be involved in the publication of the disputed map. It is no longer approved by him, but by the scientific team at the Civil Protection secretariat. The individuals who make up this team have not been identified.

Andrianos Gourbatsis argues that “Civil Protection is stuck with the charter that was issued in 1995 when the service started. A lot of things need to change. On the weekend, these Civil Protection officials are at home, yet they still issue a map. This is not serious. They check EFFIS data every day, they see where it ‘blackens’ and issue the map accordingly”. Since the 2000s, as deputy chief of the Greek fire service, he has been asking politicians to have the map issued instead by Greece’s meteorological agency, EMY. His suggestion has gone unheeded and EMY is now doing even less work than before. It used to issue a special daily map of the conditions in the burnt areas.

Phoebus Theodorou, the official formerly in charge of issuing the Civil Protection maps, has claimed (GrTimes.gr, 08/06/2021) that they are based on the Forest Fire Weather Index (FFWI) of the Canadian Forest Service, as well as other geographic information systems and software. The National Observatory of Athens refutes this assertion. Kostas Lagovardos, at the Observatory, is categoric: “It can’t be using the Canadian index, because if it did, it would produce the results that we do. Southern and northern Crete would almost never have the same hazard index when they have different scores of 4 and 5 on the Beaufort scale.”

We contacted Phoebus Theodorou in order to answer questions about this, but to no avail. In addition, we sent written questions to the General Secretariat of Civil Protection but received no response by the time this article was published.

At the moment, the most authoritative daily fire-risk map in Greece seems to be that of the National Observatory of Athens. It is based on the Canadian pyro-meteorological index and takes into account temperature, humidity, wind, drought, how many days it has not rained, in order to produce a number to quantify risk. It offers a better analysis than the corresponding Civil Protection map, since it reaches a 2×2 km level of resolution in each region of the country. However, the fire service – at least officially – bases its planning on the Civil Protection map.

Vassiliki Kotroni, director of research at the Athens Observatory, comments that “we don’t know how the Observatory data is used by the General Secretariat for Civil Protection. We do know that our weather monitoring uses a network of 550 weather stations that we operate throughout the country. Since this data is freely available, it is possible that the Civil Protection monitors our stations. But this is not based on a memorandum of understanding, on any formalised system that would oblige us to operate in a certain way. We are doing this without any obligations. In a properly organised country, things should be a little different.”

Dr Kotroni is the scientific director of the Observatory’s Meteo team, which has pioneered a mechanism to forecast the spread of fires. Called IRIS, the system is innovative at both Greek and European levels. It aims to facilitate rapid responses to active forest fires. Knowing the location and time of the start of a fire, the system can, within 20 minutes, provide a forecast of how the fire front will develop over the next few hours. Within half an hour, it can provide a forecast for the next 24 hours. The system takes into account both the meteorology and the changing weather conditions caused by the fire itself. In 2019-2020 it was successfully used in cooperation with the Civil Protection and the Fire Service in over 200 forest fires. However, for two years now, explains Dr Kotroni, “for reasons we do not know, the cooperation has faded away, and unfortunately since 2021 it has not been sought by the Civil Protection or the Fire Service”.

Although it was available, IRIS was not used during the major fires in Varibobi and Evia in 2021. In a post after the fire in Varibobi, Meteo.gr stressed that it had carried out an “ex-post forecast”, adding that “the forecast that IRIS 2.0 could have provided operationally if it had been requested is very close to the actual spread of the fire”. Today, the IRIS system is still being developed with the Athens Observatory’s own resources, without any involvement of the state. It was not used by the Civil Protection even during the catastrophic fires of July this year.

The video shows the spread of the Varybompi forest fire in 2021, as simulated vy the IRIS 2.0 rapid forecasting system. Source: Meteo.gr

This material is published in the context of the “FIRE-RES” project co-funded by the European Union (EU). The EU is in no way responsible for the information or views expressed within the framework of the project. Responsibility for the content lies solely with EDJNet. Go to the FIRE-RES page

An unemployed Roma woman with a disability, or a transgender Muslim refugee. How many layers of exclusion and discrimination can be packed into just a few words?

How many legal provisions would one have to invoke in a simple interaction between these two citizens and a public service or a private company in order to obtain equal treatment with a well-off white male European citizen? Perhaps a law student would find the question difficult to answer. But in the context of a Europe where people have seen their lives get harder for the last decade, and where after two years of pandemic they find themselves looking forward to a winter without heating or electricity, the debate about anti-discrimination is becoming difficult. And it goes beyond law.

In Greece, the implementation of anti-discrimination laws is supervised by the Greek Ombudsman. Every year he issues a special report on “equal treatment”, following Laws 3896/2010 and 4443/2016, as well as the recent 4808/2021 all of which incorporate European law.

Half of the reports concern discrimination against women

The Ombudsman’s most recent report, for 2021 and published in June, recorded 1,054 complaints, 11% more than in 2020. Of these, 49% concerned discrimination on grounds of gender, while 25% related to disability or chronic condition, 12% to marital status, 4% to age, 3% to national or ethnic origin, 3% to social status, 2% to religious or other beliefs, 1% to race or colour, and 1% to sexual orientation, identity or gender characteristics.

It is interesting that the majority of gender discrimination was suffered by working women with children. This comes at a time when conservative and rightist circles are questioning the right of women to control their own bodies, on the grounds of “protecting the life of the unborn child”.

“Over a five-year period, 50% of the reports received annually by the Ombudsman […] concern issues of discrimination between men and women”, highlights Kalliopi Lykovardi, Assistant Ombudsman for the discrimination portfolio. “What we have seen is a steady annual increase in reports on disability discrimination issues, but also a gradual increase concerning discrimination on the grounds of marital status – for example, different treatment if a person is in a civil partnership rather than married, or a single parent, or a foster parent. In contrast, there is a consistent under-reporting of issues relating to ethnic/racial origin, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, identity or gender characteristics”.

In the cases of Roma people and refugees, where the source of discrimination is their different ethnic or racial origin, what the Greek Ombudsman is trying to highlight are the underlying structural problems and the particular vulnerability of this population group. […] “The inequalities and social exclusion of Roma are extremely complex and difficult to resolve”, Lykovardi says. […] “An explosive cocktail is created by the confluence of different identities in the same person, such as Roma woman, refugee woman, LGBTI refugee, refugee with disabilities, etc., where the potential for multiple and intersectional discrimination is always present and acts as an aggravation”.

Under-reporting of discrimination based on ethnic/racial origin and sexual orientation

The specific legislation on discrimination comes in the form of an incorporation of EU law. This legislation seems to be more of an attempt to transfer law rather than to accommodate the domestic needs and data of the Greek reality. A big problem in Greece is the fact that there is no official relevant data. This fact affects both the design and implementation of policies and laws.

“It is obvious that this also makes the work of the Ombudsman more difficult” Lykovardi comments. “Policies for Roma cannot be effective if you do not know their exact number or the number of individual groups (e.g. Roma with disabilities). The legislation sets out a framework for protection and this is positive. It can be a starting point for further development and gradual progress”.

At the same time, the current framework has problems in its implementation. The main one is under-reporting.

“One can note an obvious discrepancy between real-life discrimination and the numbers of reports, i.e. 1,000 reports per year” Lykovardi admits. “This especially concerns certain fields, such as ethnic/racial origin, and sexual orientation. We know empirically that the discrimination suffered by these people is much more than what is recorded in terms of complaints”.

Another aspect is the issue of judicial protection and access to justice, where the costs are high. Legal aid is not always adequate and is often extremely time-consuming and therefore ultimately ineffective.

“Justice could provide answers to many questions” Lykovardi says. “But the administrative route is not always easy either. The communication gap between victims and the relevant institutions is wide. This is where the institutions themselves and civil-society organisations need to help.

Reluctance to strengthen the institutional framework against Roma discrimination

Andreas Takis is Chairman of the Board of the Hellenic Union for Human Rights, and Assistant Professor at the Law Faculty of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He has served as Secretary General of Immigration Policy of the Ministry of Interior (2009-2011) and Assistant Ombudsman, in charge of the Human Rights Circle (2003-2009). Regarding the implementation of anti-discdimination policies in Greece, Takis underlines that  “the legislation has certain problems because what is not obvious is that discrimination concerns daily routines in the country that go beyond the Ombudsman’s control. […] His function is not of a coercive nature, it is advisory. Further, we have a huge number of daily discriminations that intertwine with each other and exclude entire populations, as in the case of the Roma. There has been a lot of talk for years – politically it is constantly being undermined at EU level by countries with large numbers of Roma people – to finally come up with a directive which improves the existing European directives concerning the conditions of Roma in Europe”.

Unfortunately, given the social precarities of our time, horizontal tensions are increasing. The organs of the state that administer daily life, such as the police, often have a huge range of discriminatory behaviours.

But not everything goes in the wrong direction. Takis recalls the effort to renew legislation in other areas, such as LGBTQ groups. “In our country this was focused on the iconic issue of civil partnership”, remarks.

Discrimination against non-Europeans

There is another huge hole in European legislation. The idea of fighting discrimination in the EU, which is a single area of justice, security and freedom – this is something that refers solemnly to human rights, to equal treatment. But the underlying concept concerns the free movement of persons within the European area as workers.

“The issue is the interchangeability of all those living within the EU, as elements of a large market. However, this primarily concerns Europeans”, Takis asserts. “It is not clear how equal treatment concerns so-called third-country nationals, non-European citizens. This is a crucial fact given that for 20 years we have been living with mass migration, whether in the form of refugees or economic migration, and with multiple forms of integration of people into the social fabric of European countries, especially on the basis of accumulated years of residency.

We have people who have been residents for 30 years, 20, 10, 5 years or a few months. What is the point at which these people can benefit from the equal treatment promised by European legislation? In practice it is only if they become European citizens”, Takis points out.

For everyone else, Takis wonders, “is there a point at which discriminatory behaviour is something to be fought regardless of whether you are European, even from the first day you are here? Being treated inhumanely by the police because they just found you in Evros, does that have nothing to do with discrimination on the basis of race or origin or ethnicity or religion?

So this is the heart of an intractable issue of diversity in the EU, and whether being a space of democracy and freedom means anything. These will be hot issues in the coming years. I am not optimistic”, concludes.

Political will and ideological progress is required

For Dimitris Christopoulos, Professor of Political Science at Panteion University, former president of the International Federation for Human Rights, there will always be  patterns of discrimination in a class-based society. “Some are always below others. Sometimes it’s the gender criterion, so at one point it was women” Chirstopoulos comments. “Then new groups came into the story, minorities. All these groups have their own internal stratifications – i.e. the refugee woman, the unemployed Roma  woman. Multiple characteristics that are superimposed, creating a crust of discrimination that is practically impenetrable”.

To begin to address this, it is not enough to say that we have laws, according to Christopoulos. “It takes a lot of political will, a lot of ideological progress. Only then will society start to accept that an elected government’s role is to reduce and mitigate social discrimination”, concludes.

This article has been produced within the project “INGRID. Intersecting Grounds of Discrimination in Italy” financed by the European Commission, Rights, Equality, Citizenship programme 2014-2020.

Vangelis Stathopoulos, who is in Greece’s Larissa prison, is one of more than half a million people incarcerated in Europe amid the COVID-19 pandemic. And, like so many others, the prison where he is being held is an ideal breeding ground for viruses: it’s overcrowded, with cramped living arrangements, and often poor hygiene conditions.

“When I got COVID last December, around half of the prisoners in here were sick at the same time,” Stathopoulos says. “We were put into a ward with 60 people, in a space of around 110 square meters (1,200 square feet). It was a roll of the dice whether you were going to be severely or just mildly ill.”

Korydallos prison in Greece

During the pandemic, we have become accustomed to meticulously updated COVID-19 dashboards and kept a close public eye on settings vulnerable to outbreaks, such as care homes. Yet little data has been made public about the spread of the coronavirus in carceral facilities.

Together with 11 newsrooms in the European Data Journalism Network, DW has collected data from 32 countries that show how many cases and deaths were reported in prisons, how vaccinations progressed, and what measures were taken to curb the spread of the virus.

“Many prisons are overcrowded, with no possibility for physical distancing,” says Filipa Alves da Costa, a public health consultant for the World Health Organization’s Health in Prisons Program. “So, when the virus gets carried in, it gets transmitted much more easily.”

Incarcerated people vulnerable

Da Costa says the risk in prisons is similar to that faced by people living in congregate residential facilities such as care homes and shelters.

Many incarcerated people have multiple factors that put them at increased risk of severe COVID-19, including conditions such as HIV and histories of smoking or other drug use. Marginalization, poverty and poor access to health care often take their tolls on such populations even before incarceration, and prison conditions frequently have an exacerbating effect, the WHO has found. “We actually consider people in their 50s as elderly already in prisons, even though in the community they wouldn’t be,” da Costa says.

COVID outbreaks in prisons affect everyone

Outbreaks in prisons affect not only the people who are confined or working there, but also the surrounding communities. “It’s not a totally closed environment,” da Costa says. “People come in and out every day. Not only staff, but also service providers, lawyers, and prisoners themselves. So, if you’re not protecting prisons, you’re not protecting the community.”

In the US, where the coronavirus quickly swept through prisons in 2020, multiple case studies show how outbreaks in prisons spread to surrounding communities. A nationwide comparison found that COVID-19 cases grew more quickly in counties with more incarcerated people, and linked mass incarceration to more than half a million additional COVID-19 cases inside and outside prisons.

The most recent Europe-wide data collection, by the University of Lausanne, reported case numbers in prisons through September 2020. More than a year has passed since, with multiple waves, new variants and a global vaccination campaign.

First responses shut down all activity

A study by researchers in Barcelona shows that most countries locked down prisons hard and fast at the start of the pandemic.

Visits were immediately stopped or severely limited in virtually all countries. In many prisons, sports, recreational activities and work were also suspended and prison leave schemes were put on hold.

“Even our letters were quarantined,” recalls Csaba Vass, who is in prison in Hungary. Countries such as Germany, Belgium and Hungary quarantined new arrivals and prisoners who showed symptoms.

Prison infection rates follow the general population

Data collected for this investigation now show that, at first glance, these measures seem to have helped avoid the worst: Prisons have, overall, not become runaway COVID hot spots. According to the data available, infection rates in prisons in many countries seem to roughly parallel those of the population in general. 

Where infection rates were high in the general population, they also tended to be high in prisons. This is true, for example, in countries such as Slovenia, Estonia and Belgium, where more than one in 10 people have tested positive already.

In countries such as Croatia and Greece, prisoners are infected at a much higher rate than in the general population. But, in many countries, reported cases in prisons remained below the level of the general population, according to the latest available data — even in Hungary and France, countries with notoriously overcrowded prisons.

Even in countries with lower infection rates, individual prisons can still be the sites of serious outbreaks. Just recently, more than 50 people tested positive at Béziers prison in France, which currently confines 638 people to a space built for 389. 

Cases and deaths may be underreported

Official numbers may not always tell the whole story. Most prison administrations don’t collect data systematically, says Adriano Martufi, who researches prison conditions in Europe at Leiden University. “My feeling is that there is certainly a problem of underreporting,” Martufi says.

The Larissa prison in Greece, for example, had reported only 200 cases officially through July 2021. Stathopoulos says he has counted far more. “Just between December 2020 and now, I believe we’ve had more than 500 cases,” he says.

Underreporting might not necessarily be deliberate — it could also be the result of organizational challenges. “Health services in prisons are understaffed, underequipped,” Martufi says. “I’m not even sure whether they have the technical capability to collect and handle such data.”

Low case numbers come at an exorbitant price

Even if infection numbers are taken at face value, the restrictions imposed to curb the spread of the coronavirus often have side effects of their own. “The tragedy that we feared did not happen, but only with enormous sacrifices for the prison population: no more activities; an end to teaching; an end to what little work exists in prison, and so on,” Dominique Simonnot, who heads France’s independent public body for overseeing conditions at places where people are deprived of liberty. “In social terms the price is exorbitant.”

For the past 18 months, many prisons have established lockdown measures that put inmates in especially harsh conditions.

One prison in Malta kept new arrivals in a cell with just a floor mattress and an open floor toilet 23 hours a day for two weeks, in conditions that the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture had already condemned in 2013. 

Quarantine confinements pose serious health risks

The UN’s Nelson Mandela Rules, or Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, state that solitary confinement should only be used as a last resort, for as short a time as possible, and never for more than 15 days. But, during the pandemic, isolating prisoners has become a standard measure in many countries.

In Ireland, where incarcerated people 70 and older or with chronic illnesses were automatically placed in solitary confinement between April and June 2020, detainees in such isolation reported feeling depressed and even suicidal.

In some facilities in Germany, pretrial detainees were isolated for 14 days after each court hearing. 

In France, two-week isolation was mandatory after any leave of absence, family visit or outpatient medical treatment, says Dominique Simonnot, the country’s chief prisons inspector. “As a result, some are refusing these trips, with all the risks that this implies for their health.” 

And even people who weren’t under quarantine were often restricted to their cells for large parts of the day and left with very little to do to pass the time.

‘Lifeline’ for prisoners cut as visits stopped

Prohibitions on visitors were also especially difficult for many incarcerated people.

“Visits are an immensely important lifeline for prisoners,” says Catherine Heard, director of the World Prison Research Programme. “It’s hard to overstate just how much of a difference it makes to them, being able to stay in touch with families and loved ones.”

Prisoners have a right to family life, according to the European Court of Human Rights.

In October 2020, people incarcerated at the Rec prison in Albania launched a hunger strike to protest the suspension of visits when the pandemic was declared. They had only been able to contact families by phone since that March.

In Hungary, Vass says, “We had two and a half hours of physical contact twice a month before the pandemic — the lack of that caused very serious mental problems.” The prison eventually set up video-calling options to at least permit virtual visits. “That made it easier,” he says. 

Most countries introduced measures for virtual visits, although low connection speeds and usage restrictions still pose problems. “There’s been a huge leap forward in many prisons across Europe to develop videoconferencing systems,” Martufi says. “That was absolutely unthinkable in many member states before the pandemic. So that was a positive development.” 

Martufi says one possible risk of this is that prisons could attempt to use video calls as a replacement for in-person visits in the long term. “We have indication that some prison administrations said: ‘Well, now you have Skype, you can live with that — there’s no real need for you to be allowed to meet your family or your lawyers anymore,’” Martufi says.

“We don’t know yet how systemic this change is, but the risk is that this might stay with us even after the pandemic is gone.”

Apart from video calls, Catherine Heard does not see much effort being made to mitigate the effects of restrictions. “I cannot off the top of my head think of anything really meaningful that was done,” she says.

“There was a huge missed opportunity, for example, to provide reading material, recorded information or access to online courses. There were a lot of things that could have been done, should have been done, but weren’t done.”

The Netherlands was one of the countries that managed to restart prison activities relatively quickly through measures such as rotational schemes or smaller, fixed groups, Heard says. But most countries didn’t implement such measures.

Structural problems exacerbate situation

As in so many other areas of society, the situation has been exacerbated by structural problems that existed long before the pandemic.

“Some of the most severe and prolonged restrictions were seen in the countries with the worst prison overcrowding,” Heard says. A lack of space makes distancing measures impossible to implement, and alternative measures are hindered by staff shortages. “If there aren’t staff to move people around the prison,” she says, “there is no option but to keep them locked up in their cells for most of the day and night.”

Researchers, NGOs and incarcerated people alike repeatedly mention overcrowding as key to the problem. One in three European countries operate their prisons above official capacity. 

In many individual prisons, the situation is much worse than the country average suggests. “I am in a cell that is intended for five people — now there are eight of us. It is impossible to maintain distance,” a person on hunger strike told a Croatian news outlet at the start of the pandemic in March 2020. “We are unable to see our wives and children, and, God forbid, maybe some of us never see them again. We practically feel like death row inmates, waiting for the coronavirus to break into prison.”

French chief prisons inspector Dominique Simonnot: “Imagine three people crammed 10 hours a day into a 9-square-meter cell, which is only 4.5 square meters with the bunk bed, the table and the toilet area.”

During the first wave, many countries throughout Europe released people in unprecedented numbers in order to ease the pressure on prisons. “It’s what the experts have been telling them to do for years, but it was too politically scary,” Heard says. “I think COVID gave many countries an excuse to quietly reduce their prisoner numbers.”

Heard calculated that the incarcerated population may have been reduced by as much as half a million people globally between March 2020 and June 2021. Countries such as Slovenia, Belgium, France and Italy, all of which had been operating over capacity to begin with, reduced their incarcerated populations by up to 25%, bringing them down to at or below official capacity.

“One lesson countries will have learned is that they’ve reduced their incarceration numbers without the sky falling in,” Heard says. With the pandemic offering a public health reason for reducing prison populations, she says it is vital that countries now sustain the trend.

Prison populations are rising again

But many countries seem to be reversing the progress made since spring 2020. After the initial drop, incarcerated populations are now rising again in about half of the European countries studied — in some cases even surpassing their original levels. 

French and Slovenian prisons, for example, are now back to being overcrowded at the national level, with individual prisons worse off still.

Vaccinations delayed

With these structural problems exacerbating an already complicated situation, a “return to normal” in prisons hinges on the same thing it does for the rest of society: vaccination.

“When it was announced that there would be a vaccine, people became much calmer,” Vass says. “To the best of my knowledge, almost all inmates here took it. I received my first dose in May, the second in June, and, like many, I took the third in September.”

But not everyone has gotten their jab yet. One big reason for the delay is the fact that, even with the high risk to inmates, staff and the general population, most European countries did not include incarcerated people as a priority group in their vaccination plans. Many didn’t mention them at all. 

In Germany, for example, people in communal living arrangements such as elderly care homes were prioritized explicitly, but prisoners were still vaccinated in parallel with the rest of the population.

“There has been consistent indication from independent supranational organizations that prisoners should be prioritized,” Martufi says. “It’s a good example of the absolute discrepancy between the policy indications on the one hand and the reality on the ground.”

Many attribute this to a lack of political will. In some cases, Martufi says, politics even actively hindered early access to vaccination. “In Belgium, prisoners’ being prioritized became a political discussion,” he says, “and, as a result, prisoners just stayed out of the vaccination campaign until the very end.” In Italy on the other end, he says, the decision to give incarcerated people priority access to vaccinations was an administrative decision, made without much public discussion.

This has meant that the start of vaccinations in prisons was significantly delayed, with some countries not distributing a single shot in prisons before June, while others reported starting as early as the end of March.

Facing the second pandemic winter

With vaccination rates in European prisons finally reaching the level of the general population in many countries and with infections low during the summer, incarcerated people caught a breath of fresh air as visits and activities resumed under hygiene requirements.

But, with winter and the next wave arriving in most European countries, the pandemic isn’t over for anyone — and certainly not for people in prisons. “We will not get our old life, our benefits, back soon,” Csaba Vass in Hungary says. In Italy, weekly data show active cases among staff and inmates rising. And Croatia’s Justice Ministry recently confirmed that more than 20% of incarcerated people have by now been infected with the coronavirus — that is roughly 1.5 times the rate of the population in general.

Lessons for the future

Experts say countries need to reduce their prison populations drastically in order to better prepare for such situations in the future. “We cannot face another health crisis with these numbers of people incarcerated throughout Europe,” Martufi says. “That needs to go down.” 

But observers also see reason for optimism. “COVID should have been a wake-up call to invest in better prison conditions and to reduce the use of incarceration,” Catherine Heard says. 

For that wake-up call to be heard, public interest and political will are crucial. “It’s time to rethink our perception of prisoners as second-class citizens,” Martufi says. “We cannot allow anyone to be left behind. It will be worse for everyone.”

The project is a collaboration within the European Data Journalism Network

Project lead: Deutsche Welle

Collaborators: Alternatives Economiques, Civio, El Confidencial, EUrologus, Il Sole24Ore, iMEdD, MIIR, OBC Transeuropa, Openpolis, Pod črto, VoxEurop

This piece was edited by DW’s Milan Gagnon, Gianna-Carina Grün and Peter Hille.

Of the 43 countries analysed for this investigation, 12 do not allow single women to access in vitro fertilisation. Even more countries, 16, also prevent single women from getting assisted insemination. The list of countries that prevent single women from getting a donated egg is even longer.

The situation is worse for female couples: 24 countries ban their access to ART outright. For the LGTBIQ+ community, having children via ART is not an easy path in Europe. “The places where it’s most difficult for LGTBIQ+ people to get a job or to be out or to get married or to undergo legal gender recognition are also the places where it’s most difficult to have access to assisted reproductive technologies,” says Cianan Russell, from ILGA Europe, a federation of European lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex rights groups. They say Hungary and Poland are the countries where the situation is the worst, but the problem is widespread in Europe. Even where people can obtain reproductive assistance legally on paper, reality sometimes brings “discrimination, harassment or even violence” to the process, Russell says. Those who are suffering the most problems are trans and intersex people, they add.

People facing these forms of discrimination grapple with difficult alternatives. In the case of the LGTBIQ+ collective, says Russell, there are three. The first is misrepresenting one’s identity, such as female couples who lie by saying that just one of them is seeking treatment as a single woman, if that is allowed, or non-binary people or trans men who say they are women. The second alternative is crossing borders to seek access in another country. The third is conceiving with friends or trusted people even if they are not attracted to them.

Although this is not common, it is a path that many people who want to have children may take if the barriers seem otherwise insurmountable. In the case of single women, Izaskun Gamen, spokesperson for the association Single Mothers By Choice (MSPE), says that, during her years-long process to try to have children, some people suggested that she get pregnant by a stranger after a one-night stand and not tell the father. That seems unthinkable to her, she says: “How do you explain that to your child later? How do you explain that he or she was born of a deception?”

Older and older mothers

The only legal barrier for heterosexual couples, in most cases, is age. The women seeking ART are getting older. In the last decade, the average age of mothers at the birth of their first child , whether natural or assisted, has increased in most of Europe. In Spain and Ireland the average age was over 32 years old in 2019.

That’s average, which means that many women access ART later, when, because of their age, conceiving naturally becomes more difficult. Most countries put the legal ceiling for assisted reproduction around 50 years. This is the maximum age in Greece, for example, but in response to COVID-19 pandemic-related treatment delays the government extended the age to 52 years until June 30, 2023.

Juana Crespo, director of an eponymous fertility clinic in Spain specialised in difficult cases, says the main problem for her patients is old age: “We get old and, when our reproductive system becomes old, the whole orchestra is old.” She calls this a “new disease”: “The history of delayed motherhood is unwritten.”

Although women’s ages are a common source of reproductive difficulties, Carlos Calhaz-Jorge, a fertility doctor and researcher at the Universidade de Lisboa in Portugal and president of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE), says that half of the problems of couples who seek ART are from the male partner.

Yet age is not a factor of legal exclusion for men and, in general, there are no limits in European countries. Only three of the 43 countries have maximums: France, 59 years; Finland, 60 years; and Switzerland, 56 years, although in these last two cases they are recommendations, not legal prohibitions. In fact, in Switzerland the recommendation is that the father can be alive until the child turns 18, a more sociological than medical recommendation.

The most common obstacle: lack of financial resources

Once the legal obstacles are overcome, the economic ones rear their heads. According to Calhaz-Jorge, “the problem for most of the population is the lack of public funding. Even in countries where heterosexual couples are allowed to have ART it depends a lot on the public financial support.” Another discrimination, to add to the previous ones, is the economic one: not all countries cover these techniques (six do not cover it at all), and those who do sometimes only pay part of it, or the waiting lists are years-long, in a matter in which every delay works against you.

For example, in Switzerland and Poland, only insemination is funded, not in vitro fertilisation, which is much more expensive. In Greece, the public healthcare system only covers very specific cases, such as people living in faraway islands.

In fact, there are gaping differences between European countries. There are even differences between regions of the same country, such as in the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain. In Spain, for example, single women can access artificial insemination in Navarra, but not in vitro fertilisation, even if they have medical problems that prevent them from becoming pregnant through insemination. Spain’s other regions do permit that. Germany, meanwhile, does not cover in vitro fertilisation for lesbians and single women.

Age limits, already an important legal barrier for those seeking private ART access, are lower for people seeking ART through national health services. Once again, in the case of heterosexual couples, very few countries put a ceiling on the age of men. Portugal sets it at 60 years and Austria, 49. For women there are limits: from 38 in Latvia to 46 in Italy or 48 in Malta, to the most common figure in Europe, 40.

In other countries, publicly funded assisted reproduction has additional barriers, such as not exceeding a certain weight (in Serbia, Romania and some Spanish regions) or not having previous children, as in Denmark, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden and Turkey.

Another of the most common limits is to cover only a maximum number of attempts. Few countries are clear on insemination, or do not establish limits, although if they do, it is usually six or three cycles. Countries are clearer about in vitro fertilisation: almost all limit the number of funded attempts. Belgium, Slovenia and Italy fund six attempts. 15 other countries fund three attempts. Romania, Moldova, and Kazakhstan fund only one. There, either you get pregnant the first time, or if you want to keep trying you have to pay for it out of pocket.

Irene Cuevas, director of the embryology laboratory of the public General Hospital of Valencia (Spain), says that after a certain number of attempts the probability of success drops a lot. “We have very limited resources and we have to try to optimise them in some way. It is a very logical number,” she argues.

Then there are the copays, which mean that access is not free in practice. The most common are those for medicines, and they are significant. Each round of hormonal treatment for in vitro fertilisation in Spain, for example, can cost more than a thousand euros.

There are also the long waiting lists. Cuevas calls them, “the fundamental problem.” Long waits are also common, for example, in Hungary. At one point Hungary did not permit sperm donors that were not Hungarian. Even after they removed that obstacle, things did not improve, Sandor says. Last summer, Hungary nationalised all fertility clinics. “Everyone knows that this means that they’re going to be five- to 10-years-long waiting lists for those who don’t have any money,” Sándor says.

Calhaz-Jorge says this is not only a problem of rights: “I’d like to have more support in my country, Portugal, because there are too-long waiting lists and as in the rest of Europe. Our fertility is declining. More support could help slow the decline. We have an intention of providing reproductive assistance to up to 5% of all babies born in Portugal. This is realistic but for that we need more money.”

Spain is the country in Europe, together with Greece, in which more children are born thanks to assisted reproduction procedures, reaching 7.9% of the total number of children born in 2017 (last year with comparable data, but in 2019 this number grown to 9,5%). In Italy, the UK, and Portugal, the rate is around 3%.

Faced with all these difficulties, is a common European regulation possible that guarantees equal access for all? Russell, the LGBTIQ+ spokesperson, says that would be difficult. European countries, not the EU, have jurisdiction over this matter, so the only alternative when it comes to defending LGTBIQ+ rights are the courts.

Calhaz-Jorge, chairman of the ESHRE, says: “I’m convinced that it is not possible to have similar rules. If in one country it is not legal to treat single women, which kind of regulation will they have if going abroad? The political views and the cultural sensitivities are very different.” Indeed.