analysis
The EU asylum compromise has drawn a lot of criticism from Interior Minister Faeser and Foreign Minister Baerbock in Germany. But the goals of the traffic light coalition are difficult to reconcile with those of the European partners.
At the beginning of the month, after years of tough negotiations, the EU interior ministers reached agreement on the reform of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). Since this agreement with its details was on the table, two ministers in the Scholz cabinet in particular have been criticized: Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens).
Faeser because she could have negotiated harder – the traffic light wanted more than Faeser was able to get out in the end. Baerbock because, as a Green, she is supporting a reform that largely contradicts basic green values - secondary to the fact that Baerbock repeatedly makes her discomfort with it clear. Because human rights activists fear that the already intolerable situation at the EU’s external borders for refugees will become even worse as a result of the reform.
Little support for Faeser
Federal Interior Minister Faeser seemed relieved but not entirely satisfied when she gave the first interviews after the agreement on the CEAS compromise. Because she had only partially achieved her negotiation goal, she had to back down, especially on the major issue of procedures at external borders. The aim of these procedures is to stop those people at the EU’s external borders who already have little chance of asylum in the EU. They are to go through express asylum procedures at the EU’s external borders, for which they may be detained for a maximum of three months.
This means that at least large camps or even prisons would have to be built at the EU’s external borders to accommodate people for the duration of their express procedures. Faeser’s goal in the negotiations was to get an exception for families with children: they should not be imprisoned. She was relatively alone with this demand, only Portugal and Luxembourg wanted to support the German interior minister. And in the end she gave in, there will be no exceptions for families with children.
what was at stake
If Faeser had not agreed, the end of the open Schengen area would have threatened. A Europe of closed borders was what the European neighbors had thrown into the ring as a bargaining chip. Faeser said after the agreement in daily themeInterview: “Today we were able to ensure that we can continue to be a Europe of open borders. That would not have been possible otherwise, because everyone would have simply sealed themselves off.”
The price: when you think of this topic, you inevitably have to think of the pictures from the USA, pictures of children in cages, of children who had crossed the US-Mexican border with their families. Pictures of this kind could soon be a European reality.
criticism of human rights organizations
Faeser has repeatedly emphasized that the express asylum procedures at the EU’s external borders will not apply to refugees from war zones. “Only those who have very little chance of staying with us get into these external border procedures. Everyone else gets through. This doesn’t apply to Syrian or Afghan families, they come to us as usual.”
From a humanitarian point of view, that sounds exactly right, after all, the EU also wants to be a shelter. Nevertheless, there is a loophole for unwilling EU states, the human rights organizations criticize. Wiebke Judith is legal policy spokeswoman for Pro Asyl and contradicts Faeser: After the reform, the EU states can also send people to the border procedures who have come to Europe via a safe third country.
“This is relevant for Greece, for example, because Greece considers Turkey safe for all Syrians, Afghans, Pakistanis and other nationalities,” says Judith. “That means this story by Nancy Faeser, Syrians and Afghans will not end up in border procedures, that’s unrealistic.”
In other words, Greece could, for example, easily send a family who fled Syria via Turkey to the external border procedures and, if necessary, send them back – not to Syria, but to Turkey.
Where is the pressure for reform coming from?
The fact that a reform of the Common European Asylum System is needed at all is due to dissatisfaction with the distribution key – i.e. the question of how refugees are distributed within the EU. At the moment, the EU countries are not showing a lot of solidarity with each other.
The following applies: The country in which the refugee arrives must also carry out the asylum procedure. This is having a particularly negative impact on Italy and Greece. Interior Minister Faeser rejoiced that the reform would make fair distribution a duty: “Finally there is mandatory distribution within the EU states. It was so important to get it done.”
Pro-asylum spokeswoman Judith is not convinced. No EU country would be obliged by the reform to take even a single refugee from Italy or Greece, she says. “You can just as easily pay money to Greece or even Turkey to build a border with Iran as accept a refugee from Greece. This will not solve the problems of the external border states that their reception capacities are overburdened in the foreseeable future.” Hungary and Poland have already announced that they will not take in a single refugee.
Signs of the 2024 European elections?
Germany wants something in refugee policy – it wants to help many refugees, it wants to act as an inspiration within Europe. However, German policy on the asylum issue is failing because of the attitudes of its European neighbors. And not only to the neighbors with a decidedly more right-wing government like Italy, Hungary, Poland or Sweden, but also to the rest.
The reason why there is pressure for reform at all is that many of these neighbors no longer want to support the existing European asylum system, they want to soften it in the face of more and more people fleeing to Europe.
The fact that Faeser has moved away from some of its negotiation goals may also be due to a time problem: If the EU member states had not agreed on the CEAS compromise before the summer break, no more reforms would have been possible so quickly. The next European elections are due in 2024 – and many observers fear that the shift to the right in Europe could then intensify, that a GEAS reform after the next European elections could curtail the right to asylum even more.
Faeser bit the bullet, Foreign Minister Baerbock swallowed it. What Germany wants and what Germany needs in refugee policy are two completely different things.