Brussels, 27/01/2012 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 26 January, on the sidelines of the informal meeting of home ministers in Copenhagen, the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) and Luxembourg signed an agreement for the provision of technical support to Luxembourg authorities dealing with asylum requests, the EASO states in a press release.
Luxembourg expects a rise in the number of asylum requests and has called on the EASO to provide help in preparing its staff. Luxembourg, as a source explains, is one of the countries that have recently seen a significant increase in the number of asylum requests, partly due to the visa liberalisation regime for the Balkan states, a development that Belgium has also noted, and also due to the Greek situation, which has compelled the other member states to suspend their asylum request transfers to that country, albeit competent under the Dublin Regulation. In 2011, the EASO states, the number of asylum seekers applying to Luxembourg grew almost threefold compared to 2010, stretching the small country's system to the point of being “close to its capacity limits” (Ed: between January and October 2011, Luxembourg had received 1,750 asylum requests of which 1,300 were from the Balkan states, according to a letter from the Luxembourg ministry to the Commission). Luxembourg has taken on additional personnel and a team from the EASO will be in that country next week to train newly hired staff, in order to reduce backlogs in asylum request processing, the EASO states. Like Belgium, Luxembourg is one of the countries that have seen the number of asylum requests increase in the wake of visa liberalisation granted to several Balkan countries, such as Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Suspecting that abusive use was being made of asylum applications, Belgium had thus supported, in 2011, the initial request made by France and the Netherlands to be able to suspend visa liberalisation agreements for countries whose nationals submit asylum applications considered unfounded. This request became concrete in May when a Commission proposal set in place a safeguard clause to be activated in the case of sudden increases in asylum requests - a clause that has still to be validated by the European Parliament. (SP/transl.jl)