Brussels, 09/03/2012 (Agence Europe) - EU home ministers adopted on 8 March a common position on the European programme for the resettlement of refugees, proposed by the Commission in 2009. The programme aims to facilitate aims to make it easier for certain member states to take in refugees from war zones or fleeing persecution and famine, but will not impose an obligation on member states to provide resettlement if those states do not wish to do so. The proposal had long caused controversy in Council, which feared that the Commission would impose refugee quotas on member states. The proposal, as adopted on Thursday, takes up the principle of voluntary hosting of refugees.
The programme adopted extends the list of refugees whose resettlement could be funded from European funds and defines the countries of origin whose nationals will have priority in resettlement programmes. In 2013, the Commission explains, this “priority” list will thus concern refugees from Congo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Burma/Myanmar and Eritrea.
Several member states, like Sweden for example, have national resettlement programmes on the basis of which they take in a certain number of refugees each year. Others do not necessarily have provisions of this kind but can take in refugees on a case-by-case basis. In 2011, after the Arab Spring, Commissioner Malmström had urged all member states to be more involved in taking in the Libyan refugees who had, for example, arrived in Tunisia. In early February, the commissioner had indicated that, after the war in Libya, 700,000 people had fled their country and taken refuge in the neighbouring countries. Out of the 8,000 persons designated as having the most need of protection, “the EU took no more than 400”, she told the Tagesspiegel. This is almost as many as Norway alone, which is not part of the EU.
According to Commission figures published in 2011, the EU had, in 2010, taken in 5,000 persons for “resettlement” compared to 75,000 in the United States, for example. Canada and Norway also take in larger numbers of refugees than the EU member states. (SP/transl.jl)