Wide-ranging reforms for asylum laws proposed

WIDE-RANGING reforms to the asylum and refugee procedures have been proposed by the European Commission.

These are designed to prevent situations like last week’s when disputes left illegal migrants clinging to tuna nets in the Mediterranean for three days. They are also aimed at ensuring every EU member state takes its fair share of refugees and that higher common standards are applied to stop “asylum shopping”.

Greater cooperation should also reduce the numbers of illegal migrants that go missing each year in the EU after their request to stay has been rejected.

The European Council on Refugees and Exiles and the Irish Refugee Council welcomed the proposed changes and described them as long overdue.

But Robin Hanan, CEO of the Irish council said he feared that member states will negotiate lower standards when they get their hands on the proposals.

The original intention of the earlier rules — to reduce the number of illegal migrants coming into Europe — appears to have been successful. While the numbers of displaced people is increasing all over the world, those seeking asylum in the EU has halved over the past five years to 182,000 last year.

But the burden is falling unevenly on member states, with those on the periphery of the EU, especially Malta, Spain and Italy, suffering far greater influxes than other countries.

These latest moves follow last week’s tragedy when Malta and Libya fought for three days over who was responsible for illegal migrants in the Mediterranean and later when a French vessel had to remove bodies from the sea.

Help could be provided through a European support office that would coordinate training and work to take pressure off countries finding it difficult to cope when they were hit by an unexpected influx of migrants.

A review of existing procedures also showed there is a problem with illegal immigrants disappearing. Of 40,000 applications rejected, more than 24,000 of them disappeared. It was also discovered from fingerprinting of applicants that 12% had made applications in more than one country.

Migrants are still finding it worth their while to shop around as some countries reject 90% of applications from economic migrants while others like Sweden accept more than half.