[ad_1]
This morning Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, delivered the State of the Union speech at the European Parliament in Brussels, the annual speech in which the Commission lists the things it has done in recent months and the which he intends to propose in the coming months. .
Among von der Leyen’s most relevant proposals is also the abolition of the Dublin regulation, the legislative bottleneck that slows down thousands of migrants arriving by sea to Italy and Greece, and that in recent years both the Parliament of Both the The Commission had repeatedly tried to change, always meeting the opposition of the Council of the European Union (the body where the governments of the national states are represented). Von der Leyen has announced that he intends to replace the regulation with a series of measures that he will present on September 23, one day before the European Council – the meeting of EU heads of state and government – scheduled for September 24.
‘I can announce that we will abolish the Dublin regulation and replace it with a new European mechanism. It will have common structures that will deal with asylum claims and returns, and a strong solidarity mechanism, “von der Leyen said in his closing speech.
LIVE: the State of the European Union. Follow the most important EU debate this year. #StrongerTogetherEU #SOTEU https://t.co/wCPmDk5gEO
– European Parliament (@Europarl_EN) September 16, 2020
It is not yet clear how von der Leyen’s plan, about which no information has been leaked, will be received. A European official contacted by Political He explained that it is unlikely that European leaders will be able to discuss it during the Council, due to the short notice.
In short, current regulations favor the criterion of the so-called “first entry”, according to which the reception and evaluation of each application for international protection belongs to the country in which that person entered the European Union. In this way, asylum seekers are forced to stay for months or years in border countries while waiting for their application to be examined, without the possibility of traveling to reach relatives – or a more suitable labor market for them – or start a road. integration, in most cases.
In the past, Eastern European countries, traditionally hostile to migrants from the Middle East and North Africa, had rejected any compromise that contemplated the relocation of asylum seekers to their territory from Italy, Greece or Spain. Von der Leyen has not made clear how he will try to get them to accept his plan.
[ad_2]
