EU Commission: Expedited procedures for asylum seekers are a daunting task

KThere is an element of immigration policy that is less controversial than the demand for speedy asylum procedures. For years, people from left to right have expressed the wish that newcomers will not be left in the dark for too long as to whether or not they will be recognized as entitled to protection. Only when they are asked what to do with the rejected, which is more than half, does the disagreement begin: should they be deported, even if, for example, they have already found a place of training? Or should the state prefer to allow residency if repatriation is unsuccessful for a longer period of time?

Because the majority of rejected asylum seekers from all EU countries are not returned, the Brussels Commission proposed in its plan for major EU asylum reform to examine very carefully the continent’s external borders. This is done by screening asylum seekers who arrive there with little chance of being recognized in expedited procedures and then deporting rejected people directly from there.

Specifically, this means: Anyone arriving in the EU via Greece, Italy, Spain or other external border states and applying for asylum, this is what almost all unauthorized immigrants do as soon as they are discovered by border police, it must first be roughly evaluated as to its chances of success. Anyone hailing from a country of origin whose citizens last had a recognition rate of less than 20 percent must be reviewed in a fast track procedure within twelve weeks and, in the event of rejection, returned within another twelve weeks.

In “crisis situations” that the EU Commission has identified according to unspecified criteria, these deadlines could be extended to 20 weeks each. Families with children under the age of twelve and young people under 18 who enter the country without their parents should be exempt from these quick procedures. On the other hand, asylum seekers who “pose a threat to national security” or “deceive the authorities” should also be included in the fast track procedure, even if they come from countries with a high recognition rate.

To understand the gigantic task of the fast-track procedures proposed by the Commission, three things must be taken into account: first, many of the newcomers would be affected, in Italy and Spain mainly immigrants from countries of origin with a recognition rate of less than 20 percent, and in Greece it is also about a third.

Secondly, according to the Commission’s proposal, the twelve-week procedures should continue to be carried out mainly by the respective external border states and not under the sovereignty of the EU. The European Parliament and the Council had previously welcomed an extension of the EU mandate in the asylum procedure, and the German government had also advocated in its proposals for EU asylum reform, the EU asylum office EASO, which today already provides peripheral states with staff and experience helps to become a true EU asylum agency, which would then have decision-making powers. However, according to the Commission’s proposals, the previous distribution of powers should be maintained: the EU Asylum Agency supports states that are still responsible for asylum procedures.

Asylum seekers and other experts from national asylum authorities have been working under the umbrella of the EU asylum office EASO to support contaminated border states for years. The world’s largest asylum authority, the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), is particularly involved. “At times, up to two-thirds of the EU asylum experts at EASO were provided by Germany,” according to an internal report from the Federal Ministry of the Interior last week, which WELT received.

Third, it should be noted that in the fast track procedure, not only the decision of the national asylum authorities on the application must be completed within the twelve week period. Judicial review of complaints that almost always follow a denial should be complete by then.

Until now, neither the border states nor the European countries with the most efficient administrations have been able to process asylum in such a short time. In Germany, the BAMF took an average of 6.1 months for an asylum procedure in 2019. However, this average duration also includes particularly difficult old cases, sometimes stretching for years. Furthermore, there is already the possibility of expedited procedures similar to the ones the EU Commission would like to see at the external borders. But even with these expedited procedures, the BAMF needed an average of 5.2 months in 2019, according to the WELT office. In the current year, procedures are taking a bit longer on average due to corona issues.

These expedited procedures can be used in this country for asylum seekers staying in so-called anchorage centers or special reception facilities. And especially if they come from “safe countries of origin”, that is, mainly from Albania and the Western Balkans, but also from Senegal and Gambia. In addition, there are some other criteria that allow for an expedited procedure, but which are not quantitatively significant, for example, whether it can be shown that an asylum seeker has misled his or her identity or poses a threat to public safety.

It takes much longer to reach a final decision

However, in an average of 5.2 months, only the asylum procedure is completed in Germany. Because most of those rejected complain about the negative decision, it takes many months before an administrative court has decided. There is no official information on how long the expedited procedures take, including the court decision. But overall for all procedures, the average time to final decision in 2019 was 21.3 months, according to the Federal Interior Ministry.

But it is not only Germany that is far from reaching the twelve-week asylum procedures. In Sweden, which, like Germany, has particularly efficient authorities, the average duration of the decision of the Migrationsverket, the Swedish BAMF, was 288 days, according to the authority. In addition, there is the duration of a subsequent court decision. There are no expedited special procedures yet in Sweden, but they will be introduced soon.

In the Netherlands, a fast-track procedure was created years ago that must be completed within eight days for applicants from so-called safe countries of origin. By 2019, the local asylum authority claims they managed to finalize 99 percent of these decisions in four weeks. However, the concentration on these nationalities, especially the citizens of the Western Balkans and Tunisia, leads to bottlenecks in other asylum procedures. The vast majority of applicants have to wait a long time before their process begins.

In general, asylum seekers in the Netherlands who do not come from “safe countries of origin” must recover from the stress of flight or travel after arrival in a “rest period” of about six days before they arrive. start the procedure. However, in 2018 and 2019, according to the asylum research institute ECRE, this “rest period” averaged about one year. The Dutch Justice Ministry informed parliament that they wanted to limit delays until 2021, but that it would be difficult.