Brussels, 28/06/2012 (Agence Europe) - Council and European Parliament (EP) representatives were unable, on Wednesday evening 27 June, to come to agreement on one of the texts of the asylum package, the text on standards for the reception of asylum seekers, on which Antonio Masip Hidalgo (S&D, Spain) is the EP rapporteur. At this latest trialogue meeting, which the EP had hoped would be the last, differences centred on how to re-assess consignment of asylum seekers to holding centres, in particular in prisons, and on how to define vulnerable asylum seekers.
Yet other points had so far been more or less agreed between the sides, according to a source on the civil liberties committee, for example, the free legal assistance which member states wanted to restrict only to appeals and challenges against administrative decisions, and the reasons for placing asylum seekers in holding centres, in particular for placing asylum seekers in prisons. One of the problem areas, the source said, was, however, conditions for re-assessing consignment to holding centres.
According to the Commission's 2008 proposal, consignment of asylum seekers to detention should be ordered by legal authorities but, in emergencies, it may be ordered by administrative authorities, in which case the decision must be upheld by the legal authorities within 72 hours of the start of the consignment. Where the legal authorities deem that asylum seekers have been illegally placed in holding centres or when no decision is delivered within the 72-hour time allowed, the asylum seeker must immediately be released. Under the same Commission proposal, keeping asylum seekers in holding centres must be reviewed at reasonable intervals by legal authorities, either at the request of an asylum seeker or as a matter of course. The Council, however, issued objections to the principle of automatic review by a judge of administrative decisions to place people in holding centres, being of the view that it might not be possible in all cases, an EP source said.
The civil liberties committee had been expecting an agreement on Wednesday evening but the Council had been considering over the last few days that a further one or two trialogues might be needed. At any rate, agreement will have to be reached on the 2008 draft directive on reception standards for asylum seekers, which replaces a text dating from 2003, before the end of 2012, as the whole common asylum system is due to come into effect. Other trialogue meetings have been held recently on revision of the Dublin II regulation which seeks to identify as quickly as possible the member state responsible for examining asylum applications. No definitive agreement has been reached so far but, some sources state, the positions of the parties do not appear to be irreconcilable, with the EP conceding that the clause on suspending transfers of asylum seekers be removed but still being concerned about the fate of unaccompanied minors and calling for their situation to be very specifically taken into account in possible transfers from one member state to another. The other elements in the asylum package are a proposal on police access to Eurodac's fingerprint database, that was tabled in May, standards of procedures for granting or withdrawing international protection and the conditions of eligibility for such protection. Some of these directives, such as the qualifications directive, have already been agreed.
The member states are to repeat at the summit on 28-29 June their commitment to agree on a common asylum system by the end of this year, an objective the Council has been trying to achieve for more than a year. In recent days, a few lines have been reserved for the asylum package in the provisional conclusions of the summit centred on the crisis in the eurozone. These lines will hail the progress made thus far on the various texts under discussion. (SP/transl.rt)