MIL-OSI Europe: Answer to a written question – Prison capacity shortage – E-001008/2025(ASW)

Detention issues, including the management of detention capacity and arrangements between EU countries in this regard, are a Member State competence.

In the past, Norway and Belgium have rented detention spaces in the Netherlands to address overcrowding in their prisons. The experiment had mixed results[1] and ultimately neither Norway nor Belgium extended their contracts with the Netherlands[2].

The Commission adopted a recommendation[3] that provides guidance to Member States on how to ensure, among other things, that detainees’ fundamental rights are respected and that they are treated with dignity.

• [1] See ‘Where Two “Exceptional” Prison Cultures Meet: Negotiating Order in a Transnational Prison’
  Alison Liebling, Berit Johnsen, Bethany E Schmidt, Tore Rokkan, Kristel Beyens, Miranda Boone, Mieke Kox, An-Sofie Vanhouche, The British Journal of Criminology, Volume 61, Issue 1, January 2021, Pages 41-60. https://academic.oup.com/bjc/article/61/1/41/5892706
• [2] https://prisonreformtrust.org.uk/blog-renting-foreign-prison-places-the-unanswered-question. The Norwegian scheme ran for three years from 2015 to 2018 and the arrangements in Belgium for seven years from 2009 to 2016.
• [3] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32023H0681