Brussels, 31/08/2015 (Agence Europe) - As a number of politicians, including the Greek president, Prokopis Pavlopoulos, called over the summer for a new European summit on the immigrant crisis, the Luxembourg Presidency of the Council of the EU decided on Sunday 30 August to comply with the request from France, Germany and the United Kingdom to convene a special Justice and Home Affairs Council in Brussels on 14 September.
The decision follows a raft of sordid details that have emerged in recent days, such as the discovery on 27 August of the dead bodies of 71 immigrants in a lorry in Austria (see EUROPE 11377).
The agenda of the formal Council meeting will include measures to be taken or to be amplified concerning the return of immigrants who cannot claim asylum in the EU, cooperation with the countries the migrants come from or travel through in preparation for the summit in Valletta in mid-November, and the battle against people-smuggling. The ministers may also discuss the European Commission's proposals set out in the European Migration Agenda in May to allow the relocation in the member states of 40,000 people who have arrived in Greece and Italy (see EUROPE 11363).
The Luxembourg Presidency has added the question of immigration to the agenda of upcoming meetings of EU sherpas (COREPER), and the special JHA Council on 14 September is expected to take shape over the next few days, but not before the State of the Union speech to be given at the European Parliament's plenary in Strasbourg on 9 September by Jean-Claude Juncker.
The president of the European Commission is expected to announce in his speech a number of proposals for dealing with the migration crisis. On Monday 31 August, Margaritis Schinas, a Commission spokesperson, said that Juncker would bring forward the timing of some measures announced in the European Migration Agenda, including returns policy, the role of the Frontex agency and the common list of safe countries of origin for Western Balkans states that have applied to join the EU. The Commission has announced plans to unveil a permanent European mechanism for relocating asylum-seekers in the member states in the event of an immigration crisis.
As regards the Dublin Regulation that organises member states' responsibility for processing asylum requests, a consultation about possible changes is planned for 2016, explains the department of Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos. Calls have been mounting in recent days for changes to the Dublin system, which is accused of generating too much pressure on countries in the front line where immigrants first arrive in Europe. German foreign and economy ministers Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Sigmar Gabriel, along with the Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, have publicly called for changes to the regulation.
Calls for a speedier sharing out of the 40,000 asylum-seekers and introduction of 'hotspots'. In the more immediate term, a technical meeting among members of the European Commission, the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) and national experts will be held on 2 and 3 September to see how to organise the sharing out of 40,000 asylum-seekers among the EU28. The technical details will need to be examined and the European Parliament will give its views on the question in plenary next week. On 16 July, the European Parliament's civil liberties committee adopted a report by Ska Keller (see EUROPE 11361). The technical meeting will not raise doubts in the member states about relocating of the 40,000. On 20 July, ministers only managed to agree on the sharing out of 32,256 people, but agreed to examine the issue again before the end of the year. The figures are better when it comes to the rehousing of refugees currently living in countries bordering on Syria, with more than 22,500 places offered in the EU and countries associated with the refugees.
In Calais on Monday 31 August, on the fringes of a visit by European Commissioners Timmermans and Avramopoulos, the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, called for a sharing of the burden among member states, commenting that too many countries are refusing to take their share and this cannot be accepted. He pointed out that France has accepted the share allocated to it by the European Commission (6,752 people from Greece and Italy to be housed over two years). In parallel to the introduction of a harmonised, unified European asylum policy for the return of refugees and services provided to refugees, Valls hoped that the option of deploying European border guards would be examined. Likewise, he called for the setting up of 'hotspot' sorting centres in Greece and Italy to be speeded up in order to allow economic migrants to be returned to their country of origin. French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said 60% of the migrants in Calais were economic migrants and the other people would be able to obtain protection. These figures are challenged by NGOs on the ground.
In Calais, where there are reported to be more than 3,000 migrants, the European commissioners announced €5.2 million in emergency aid for France from the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF). The aid should enable a new humanitarian centre to be built for the start of 2016.
Closure of the Hungarian border and tighter controls in Austria. The wall of barbed wire built between Hungary and Serbia to prevent migrants who have travelled from Greece to Serbia from entering the EU, was expected to be finished on Monday. French foreign minister Laurent Fabius was shot down in flames by Budapest when he described the wall as anti-European and going against the values of the EU. The same day, a Hungarian train carrying between 300 and 400 immigrants was stopped at the Austrian border and people on the train who had made a request for asylum in Hungary were returned to Budapest, according to reports by AFP.
At the same time, Austria is carrying out controls along its border with Hungary, in agreement with its German and Slovakian neighbours, to catch traffickers and smugglers. These operations are reported to have caught more than 200 migrants and arrested 5 people-smugglers. (Solenn Paulic)