Brussels, 08/.09/2015 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament's main political groups called on the European Commission on Tuesday 8 September to bring forward an ambitious approach on managing the refugee crisis and urged the member states to accept the proposals to be unveiled on Wednesday 9 September.
In his first State of the Union address since taking over the reins of the Commission in October 2014, President Jean-Claude Juncker is expected to unveil a package of legislative proposals on Wednesday morning, including an emergency mechanism for sharing out 120,000 people to ease the burden on Greece, Italy and Hungary and a permanent, compulsory, quota-based mechanism for sharing the burden to apply in all future migration crises. A list of six safe countries of origin, details of the returns policy and a Fund for Africa of almost €2 billion also feature among the proposals to be set out.
Parliament's political families, in particular the EPP, S&D and ALDE, and with the probable exceptions of the Europhobic and extremist groups, will seek to come together in a joint resolution, to be put to the vote on 10 September, relating generally to the latest events in the EU.
On Tuesday afternoon, negotiations were continuing and the number of groupings likely to sign up to the joint resolution was not yet clear. The goal, a source revealed, is to produce a “short, effective” resolution that unambiguously backs the Commission to “present a united front against the Council”. However, a number of difficulties will have to be overcome both between groupings - while effectively all of the EPP, S&D, ALDE, Greens/EFA and GUE/NGL Groups support a permanent, compulsory mechanism, the ECR Group believes that compulsory quotas are counter-productive and refuses to back them - and also within the groups themselves, where tensions have appeared, an ALDE source said on Tuesday morning. What has become apparent is “an east-west split”, with MEPs from the countries of the east of the EU totally against any quota system. Also noted has been “some annoyance at Germany and the feeling that it is Berlin that is deciding all that is to happen on sharing” asylum seekers.
Compulsory sharing and Dublin system at core of resolution. In general terms, the resolution is expected to call on the member states to support the binding solidarity mechanism, the famous quota system. It is also likely to underline the importance of developing legal channels for entering the EU in order to reduce the risks migrants run in crossing the Mediterranean. These legal channels also provide a way of knowing who is coming into the EU, said Cecilia Wikström (ALDE, Sweden) on Tuesday morning.
For the S&D Group, it is important that it is put on record that “Dublin isn't working” and that it must be reviewed, said the group's leader Gianni Pittella (Italy), rather pleased at proposals to resettle 120,000 more people among the countries of the EU.
This is a point of view shared by Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the ALDE Group, who believes that the Dublin system must be replaced by “an asylum system based on sharing”, he said on Tuesday morning.
Manfred Weber (Germany), who heads up the EPP, said that the resolution, which will “support the proposals” of the Commission, will be a call to the member states to agree to the sharing procedure. However, he underlined the importance of striking a balance between the aid to be given to refugees and the need to control borders. He called on candidate countries which have a key responsibility on migrants and on Turkey, in particular, to bring a halt to the activities of the smugglers.
Parliament disappointed by member states on resettling 40,000 asylum seekers. Alongside this attempt to submit a proposal for a joint resolution, MEPs continued their discussions on the emergency mechanism to resettle 40,000 people as proposed by the Commission on 27 May to relieve some of the strain on Greece and Italy. In the plenary session on Wednesday afternoon, MEPs will adopt the report by Ska Keller (Greens/EFA, Germany) on this emergency arrangement.
At an exceptional meeting of the civil liberties committee on Monday evening, MEPs expressed their disappointment at the fate reserved since then by the Council for the proposal which seeks to resettle 24,000 people from Italy and 16,000 from Greece. On 20 July, home affairs ministers confirmed the pledge made by the European summit of 25 June to resettle these 40,000 people over two years but were able only to agree on taking 32,256 asylum seekers.
Ska Keller, the rapporteur for the issue, was also agitated on Monday by the changes introduced by the Council to its general approach of 20 July. She particularly criticised the fact that in order to avoid the secondary flows of resettled asylum seekers to other Schengen countries, the Council has asked that they report in regularly to the authorities of the country or the local authorities to prove they are still on the soil of the country where they have been resettled. “This does not feature in the European directives”, Keller stated. She also deplored the fact that the whole system had become voluntary.
Keller said that the European Parliament could ask for a new right of consultation if it believed the Council's position deviated too far from the Commission's initial proposal. The Parliament is indeed only consulted on this resettlement mechanism and does not have co-decision. This possibility does not, however, seem to have been convincing, with the EPP Group believing that a new consultation would delay the process too long, when it is supposed to respond urgently.
The MEPs nevertheless attach importance to the role that they will be able to play in the framework of the future permanent obligatory mechanism for resettling asylum seekers - a mechanism that will be based on co-decision. For some observers, especially the NGO FREE which is active in the area of civil liberties, the resettlement mechanisms have consequences on Dublin as they change its outlines. FREE believes that the Parliament has simply “been duped” in only being consulted on the resettlement mechanism, when everything that affects the Dublin Regulation should involve the Parliament. (Solenn Paulic)