faq
The EU has agreed to tighten asylum law. What is it about? And what exactly is planned at Europe’s external borders? Answers to important questions.
The EU states and the European Parliament have agreed in principle on the reform of the Common European Asylum System (GEAS). After years of dispute, the EU wants to learn the lessons from 2015 and 2016, when more than a million people came to Germany alone.
What is it about?
Essentially, the five legal texts are about stricter asylum rules and relieving the burden on main countries of arrival such as Italy or Greece. The European Union Asylum Agency is expecting more than a million applications this year – that would be the highest number since 2015 and 2016. Almost a third of these are likely to come from Germany.
What is planned at Europe’s external borders?
For the first time, there will be asylum procedures directly at the EU borders in order to prevent migrants with particularly low chances of being accepted from continuing their journey. This affects people from Morocco, Tunisia or Bangladesh. Because they have a maximum of 20 percent recognition rate in the EU, which is now becoming the benchmark.
What happens during border procedures?
The migrants should be held near the border and deported directly from there. Legally, they are considered not to have entered the country. The asylum procedure and deportation should generally last twelve weeks each. The member states initially want to create 30,000 places in border camps, and after four years there should be 120,000.
Why was this controversial?
The federal government and especially the Greens insisted on exempting unaccompanied minors and families with children from border procedures for humanitarian reasons. However, this central concern failed, and the EU Parliament was also unable to get the demand accepted. Even within the ranks of the European Green group, not everyone supported the German wish.
Where else should there be asylum procedures?
The member states can return asylum seekers to “safe third countries” such as Tunisia or Albania, which Italy and Austria, among others, have demanded. Refugee organizations warn of human rights violations in such third countries. There is currently no uniform EU list of “safe third countries”.
What are the plans for distributing migrants?
The principle remains that the country of first entry is responsible for an asylum application. In the future, however, a mandatory solidarity mechanism will be used to redistribute migrants from particularly burdened arrival countries such as Italy, Greece or Malta. Up to 30,000 people are to be redistributed each year. However, states that are not willing to accept them, such as Hungary, can buy their way out of this with 20,000 euros per migrant. According to parliament, Mediterranean countries can also insist on solidarity after sea rescue operations.
What about registering migrants?
So far, numerous people have arrived in Germany unregistered. The reform is intended to increase the pressure on border countries such as Greece or Italy to record their identity when they first enter the EU. The EU wants to prevent multiple asylum applications in different countries and better track where migrants are moving.
What checks are there on arrival?
The border countries should register migrants’ fingerprints and other biometric information in the EU’s central Eurodac database. Anyone who poses a “security risk” should be specifically identified. Children aged six and over are also affected. The quick check should take a maximum of seven days. If an entry application is deemed unfounded, the migrant can be immediately sent back to their home country or a third country.
What happens when a particularly large number of refugees arrive?
This is regulated by a so-called crisis regulation. Migrants with a higher chance of recognition should then also go through the border procedures; they can then even be held for 18 weeks instead of twelve. The member states also want to largely suspend regular asylum procedures if migrants are “instrumentalized”. The EU recently accused Russia of using refugees as political pressure.
What’s next?
The asylum pact is intended to last until the European elections, which will take place in Germany on June 9th. To do this, member states and the European Parliament still have to formally adopt the legislative package.
Source: AFP