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The European Commission is abandoning the idea of mandatory refugee quotas as it revives an attempt to change Europe’s asylum and migration rules after more than four years of stalemate.
The long-awaited immigration proposals, delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, would allow EU member states to choose between accepting refugees or taking over to return those who were denied asylum to their countries of origin.
As a sweetener to host refugees or asylum seekers rescued in the Mediterranean Sea, countries would be offered 10,000 euros (9,192 pounds sterling) for each adult, financed from the EU budget. But in a break with the past, no country would be obliged to offer refuge to anyone.
This “à la carte solidarity” aims to break the stalemate that has prevailed since 2015, when the EU forced the approval of mandatory refugee quotas at the height of the migration crisis by a qualified majority. Hungary, which was later joined by Poland, refused to accept refugees. The two countries joined a blocking coalition that blocked a 2016 reform attempt based on mandatory payments for those countries that refused to accept asylum seekers.
While the latest changes are designed to ease pressure on front-line states, Italy, Greece and Spain are likely to be disappointed that they retain the default responsibility for handling asylum claims.
European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson said the emphasis on returns reflects the change in reality since 2015. “We have to deal with the real situation and not with the situation that people have in mind,” she told a group of reporters. “Plus [arrivals] they are not refugees: two thirds of irregular arrivals will have a negative decision. “
In 2019, 491,200 people were ordered to leave the EU, but only 29% were returned to their country of origin. Johansson said that “it may not be feasible to get a 100% return,” but that there is “significant room for improvement here.”
While improving returns has been a goal of EU policy for years, the commission hopes to inject momentum by appointing a returns coordinator to assist member states.
Johansson, the Swedish commissioner, hopes that taking care of returns will be an attractive option for EU governments that do not want to host asylum seekers. He insisted that the absence of historical ties with the Middle East and African countries should not be an obstacle to assuming “return patronage.” His own country had “invested heavily in Morocco and Afghanistan” to encourage these governments to win back their citizens, he said.
But governments will hold themselves accountable for the migrants they don’t return to.
Governments avoiding relocation and returns could also choose to spend money on other measures, for example, funding reception centers in front-line states like Greece. But the commission could overturn these gestures if not enough countries turn up to do the heavy lifting of relocation and returns. “Everyone has to do their share of solidarity,” Johansson said.
The commission also promises faster processes – it wants to introduce a rule that all arrivals must have health and safety checks completed within five days. Despite a promised pilot program in Greece, it is unclear whether the EU has the resources to speed up the notoriously slow procedures in Greece and Italy.
EU leaders cut spending on migration and border control by 8.5 billion euros, or 27%, when they reached an agreement on the bloc’s next seven-year budget in July.
The proposals will undoubtedly change in the tumult among EU lawmakers in all 27 member states and the European Parliament, and the final deal is far from certain.
More than five years after Angela Merkel opened Germany’s borders to hundreds of thousands of refugees, migration continues to divide the EU, although arrivals are much lower.
Around 150,000 irregular immigrants arrived in the EU in 2018, the lowest level in five years, and only a fraction of the 2.4 million who came to live in the EU27 from the rest of the world in the same period.
The dire conditions some asylum seekers face, encapsulated by the burning Moria camp, are seen as testimony to the failure of the EU. On the eve of the new proposals, the UN refugee agency and the International Organization for Migration warned that current EU policy was “unworkable, unsustainable and often has devastating human consequences.”
Following reports of illegal returns in the Mediterranean Sea and at land borders, the commission wants to introduce a follow-up mechanism to investigate abuses. “To be frank, I can’t act on these reports, because I don’t have the ability to investigate,” Johansson said.
However, two NGOs said there were “long-standing and well-documented violations of EU laws”, and asked the commission to initiate legal action against the Greek government. Oxfam and WeMove Europe filed a legal complaint Tuesday after briefing De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek’s lawyers.
NGOs argue that the Greek government’s new asylum law violates EU law by denying asylum seekers a fair procedure. “The commission should urgently assess whether the Greek authorities are respecting EU law and whether they trigger legal proceedings against Greece for exposing people seeking asylum on its territory to suffering and abuse,” said Marissa Ryan, head of the office of Oxfam in the EU.
