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The EU reaches a crucial agreement that obliges to distribute a quota of refugees throughout the community bloc

2023-06-09T05:14:55.379Z

Highlights: States that refuse to receive must pay to a common basket 20,000 euros for each person not admitted. Poland and Hungary, countries radically opposed to any compulsory reception system, have voted against the pact. The guidelines establish a distribution of 30,000 asylum seekers to relocate among all member states – distributed by population and GDP criteria. The goal is to create a piggy bank of 600 million a year with these contributions, according to the European Council of Ministers. The regulations agreed on Thursday are two of the three pending of the migration pact (the crisis management one remains)


States that refuse to receive must pay to a common basket 20,000 euros for each person not admitted


After years stranded in negotiations and disputes, the ministers of the Interior of the Twenty-seven have reached this Thursday an agreement of enormous importance that hardens the reception of asylum seekers, but also forces that a part of the applicants for that protection that arrive in the EU is assumed by all community countries, an element that until now had prevented any agreement. It is a historic pact that closes two of the last fringes of the migratory pact, designed to fix the new architecture of reception in the community territory.

The agreement follows the spirit of "mandatory but flexible solidarity" and states that all countries must contribute to migration management. The guidelines agreed on Thursday in Luxembourg establish a distribution of 30,000 asylum seekers (last year some 180,000 people arrived in EU territory in an irregular situation) to relocate among all member states – distributed by population and GDP criteria. Those who refuse to accept will have to contribute to the common solidarity basket with 20,000 euros for each migrant not admitted; The goal is to create a piggy bank of 600 million a year with these contributions. Poland and Hungary, countries radically opposed to any compulsory reception system, have voted against the pact, which also extends in an unprecedented way the possibilities of expulsion to rejected applicants to countries other than their country of origin.

"The regulations seek the balance between solidarity and responsibility," said Maria Malmer Stenergard, Minister of Migration of Sweden, the country that chairs the Council of the EU this semester and has coordinated the proposal. "It's a historic agreement," German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said. Although arrivals of irregular migrants have gone from 1.04 million in 2015 to about 180,600 in 2022, the European Union is still looking for ways to reduce flows. And to the agreements with the countries of arrival and an architecture to take care of this external dimension, the Union now wants to add the internal management in which that quota of 30,000 people relocated per year is contemplated.

The regulations agreed on Thursday are two of the three pending of the migration pact (the crisis management one remains), which began to be raised in 2021, after common policies were blown up by the migration crisis eight years ago, which overwhelmed the EU and cemented the growth of far-right parties that exploit the anti-immigration discourse. The formula – which guides the criteria and procedures for asylum applications – tightens the rules for managing migratory flows, imposes shorter periods for the processing of requests and for the final response and proposes that there are limits in the channels of asylum application. But, above all, it raises this sharing of burdens. "It is a step to provide Europe with a fairer, more effective and more supportive asylum system," said Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska.

From the beginning, the Council proposed to approve the asylum regulations at the table of ministers and by qualified majority (not unanimously) and they have tried at all costs that the issue did not reach the summit of leaders on June 28, where unanimity prevails. This would not affect the negative vote of Hungary and Poland, with illiberal governments that oppose the migration issue by system. For weeks, the key has been Italy, which with the ultra Executive of Giorgia Meloni and the numbers of arrivals shot to its shores – until April received 26,800 irregular migrants, most from Tunisia, according to UNHCR – knows that it would be difficult to swallow at home that it has supported without fighting to the maximum any rule that does not seem much harsher than the current one. But no one wants an agreement that does not have the blessing of Rome, on the front line of migrant arrivals, on a route of high affluence and a member of the group of five Mediterranean countries, says a diplomatic source.

So Italy has obtained some of the concessions it demanded, such as reducing reception quotas a little and also the time for which a country is responsible for the requests for protection presented by migrants arriving in that territory, which remains in two years. It is currently one year, but the countries that receive these migrants later, in what are called "secondary movements", such as Germany, the Netherlands or Denmark, were pushing for three. Lithuania, Malta, Bulgaria and Slovakia, which has asked for exceptions for the countries hosting the most Ukrainian refugees, abstained.

Meanwhile, Poland's Undersecretary of the Interior, Bartosz Grodecki, has harshly criticized the idea of economic contributions – in exceptional cases it will also be possible to contribute quantifiable technical and logistical means – to the common solidarity basket in the case of those who do not relocate. "It's not solidarity, it's punishments, fines," he said. "This mechanism is not going to help, but it is a step backwards," he added.

Fast-track management procedures

The rules, which once approved will have to be negotiated with the European Parliament to obtain a final text, will oblige member states to create two ways to meet the requests of newcomers. After a first screening, which should be done soon, within approximately one week, migrants seeking asylum who come from countries at war or in situations of danger will be sent through the first management channel; The second channel of applications will pass through those who come from a country with a very low rate of asylum recognitions. To the latter, the authorities must respond within 12 weeks. After that time, if their application has been rejected, they can be sent to their country of origin or to a third country considered safe with which they have some kind of connection, a point that has been left open after a whole day of negotiations and several proposals, to satisfy those who wanted a wider range of possibilities. It is one of the decisive points of the agreement.

To support the implementation of the new plans, especially for border procedures, the European Commission will inject a package of about 1 billion euros to member states, said Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson. "When we work together to manage migration in the European Union, we all win," he said in Luxembourg. "If we are not united, we all lose," Johansson added.

Spain has managed to introduce into the text one of its main demands: that the time of responsibility for people who arrive in a country as a result of rescue and rescue operations (those rescued at sea, fundamentally) be shorter (it has been set at 12 months). Operations, recalled Minister Grande-Marlaska, which are an obligation of international law.

Critics of the deal have warned that the new fast-track procedures may encourage overcrowded migrant detention centers. Although the Twenty-seven claim that they have designed the system of progressive quotas to avoid it. For experts such as Camino Mortera, head of the Brussels office of the Centre for European Reform, the regulations and the design of the pact in themselves do not solve the current situation. "A series of necessary steps and a mechanism for emergency crises have yet to be agreed," says Mortera. "It's going to be anything but an efficient and effective pact," he adds.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2023-06-09

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