Brussels, 20/07/2015 (Agence Europe) - Meeting in Brussels in an extraordinary Council devoted to the relocation within the EU of 40,000 persons who have requested international protection, EU home affairs ministers failed on Monday 20 July to come to agreement on sharing out 32,256 migrants.
The JHA Council did, however, agree to give itself until December to achieve the goal of 40,000 people and to re-assess the situation then.
A positive point to come out of the meeting is that, on resettling 20,000 refugees currently living in camps outside the EU, ministers have gone further, offering 22,504 places.
EU heads of state and/or government pledged on 25 June to take in 60,000 people in need of international protection, including 20,000 as part of resettlement programmes (which concerns refugees currently in camps in third countries) and 40,000 to be relocated. They left it to their ministers to finalise the details of how the numbers were to be divided before the end of July.
The leaders also agreed that the relocation should be on a voluntary basis, and this allowed some member states to tell their partners on Monday 20 July that they would not be taking any migrants. The United Kingdom and Denmark confirmed on Monday that they did not wish to take part in the scheme, each of these countries having an opt-out. The previous Danish government had demonstrated a certain openness to the idea but the current government made it known that it was going to use its opt-out.
“We mustn't present things as being less than what was wanted in the European summit conclusions”, commented a high-level diplomatic source, opining that the main thing is that “the measure is beginning to be put in place”. Once the European Parliament delivers its opinion - no more is required of it - in principle at the start of September, the volunteer countries will be able to begin relocating and resettling these thousands of people in the EU. That process should begin in the autumn. Taking the view that the meeting “wasn't a failure”, a second source stated a little earlier that the goal of relocating 40,000 people was part of a two-year long process.
Some good and some bad. In concrete terms, the countries doing most remain Germany and France with 10,500 and 6,752 relocation places offered, followed by the Netherlands which will take 2,047 people. These are followed by Romania which has pledged to take 1,705 people.
Other member states, such as Spain and Portugal, however, made proposals far lower than expected. Spain, which adamantly opposed the Commission's initial proposal to make sharing out compulsory with numbers based on a raft of criteria, pledged only to take in a lower number of people. The Commission calculated at the end of May that, under the four criteria, Madrid should take 4,288 people. The Spanish interior minister, Jorge Fernandez Diaz, offered to take only 1,300 for relocation, and 1,449 for resettlement.
Other home affairs ministers, such as Austrian minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner, set the tone on their arrival in Brussels. She indicated that Austria would take 400 more people as part of the resettlement scheme but made her country's participation in the programme to relocate 40,000 people subject to two conditions, including that Greece and Italy comply with their obligations in terms of registering and finger-printing migrants.
She equally wanted only to help those countries that were facing greater migratory pressure than Austria, highlighting that, with 70,000 asylum requests lodged in her country since the start of 2015, Austria had received twice as many asylum applications as Italy and Greece together. Thus, ultimately, Austria did not offer any relocation places. Some of its partners were rather unhappy with this, wondering if the country would not end up remorsefully announcing relocation places.
Hungary, as it had indicated in Luxembourg on 9 July, confirmed that it would not be participating in either of the two programmes and offered no places. The European Commission proposed at the end of May that the country take in 827 people. Portugal was also among the countries whose offer was lower than expected, with 1,309 relocation places against the 1,701 suggested by the Commission.
“During the meeting, I strongly urged the member states to reach the threshold of 40,000 people”, stated Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, who holds the migration portfolio. Slightly disappointed, he tried to find the positive in the way these proposals have played out, some member states which have never been involved in resettlement in the past, committing themselves, despite everything, to the programme.
Avramopoulos said he was optimistic that the figure of 40,000 people would be reached by December. Equally confident was Luxembourg minister with responsibility for asylum and immigration Jean Asselborn, who had already expressed his confidence in mid-June that the sharing out of the 40,000 asylum seekers would be settled by the end of July. “We are in a do-nothing period” and “once the elections are over”, solutions will come more easily, he said, alluding to Spain and Poland. Poland proposed 1,100 relocation places, when the Commission was thinking more in terms of 2,659.
“There are countries which have problems, such as Hungary”, and Austria, Asselborn said. “We can understand that a country has a problem but we have to be aware of the image that that presents to the outside world”, he added, conceding that, in the course of the meeting, he had come to realise that the 40,000 objective was not achievable “by force” (our translation throughout).
At the same time, the Council adopted conclusions on Monday on the designation of certain third countries, especially the Balkans countries, as safe countries of origin in the sense of the directive on asylum procedures. (Solenn Paulic)