Brussels, 14/09/2015 (Agence Europe) - Meeting in Brussels on Monday 14 September, the EU home affairs ministers failed to find an agreement on the principle of relocating 120,000 new asylum seekers from Greece, Italy and Hungary. The reason for this was continuing disagreements with a handful of countries including Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Instead, the Luxembourg Presidency of the Council of the EU simply noted on Monday evening, after seven hours of negotiations, that while a large majority of countries support this proposal to relocate 120,000 additional asylum seekers, it was not possible to have the specific conclusions of the Council adopted by consensus. Indeed Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Romania blocked the dynamic, again rejecting the system of mandatory quotas.
European Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship Dimitris Avramapoulos suggested that if the extraordinary European summit mentioned by European Council President Donald Tusk was not held, a new extraordinary meeting of home affairs ministers could be organised. This meeting would take place before the one on Thursday 8 October which has already been scheduled.
“We were hoping for stronger language” through the conclusions of the Council rather than of the Presidency, said a source from the Luxembourg Presidency at the end of work. In concrete terms, these conclusions mean that not all the member states currently want to participate in the relocation mechanism for these 120,000 new people - a mechanism that comes on top of the relocation mechanism for 40,000 asylum seekers that was approved at pains in July (see EUROPE 11385 and 11363).
The discussions dragged on Monday evening on whether or not to include the reference in the conclusions to the participation of “all the member states” in the mechanism, and the failure to have this wording approved by consensus was recorded. A qualified majority of member states, which is required by the legal basis of the proposal, certainly exists however, but it is politically difficult to impose this vote on the resistant countries. “We're speaking about people. We're not going to force countries to take people they don't want, nor are we going to send people to these countries”, said a European source at the end of their work.
On behalf of the Presidency of the Council, Luxembourg's minister for asylum and immigration, Jean Asselborn, did not totally rule out this option. “The Council has been able to vote by qualified majority since [the treaty of] Lisbon. The conclusions are based on a very very large majority”, he said.
Hungary is adamant. The Presidency conclusions (Article 8) only mention the principle of a political agreement on relocating these 120,000 asylum seekers, and they state the resolve of all the member states to participate in this - wording that leaves much unknown as to the concrete commitments. The text states that the ministers agree to continue work on the basis of the European Commission proposal. However, it is not certain that the positions of the resistant countries will change in a few weeks. “This will all be the work of the Presidency”, the Luxembourg source stated.
As it had indicated during an initial meeting of member state ambassadors on Thursday 10 September (see EUROPE 11387), Hungary persisted on Monday in its refusal to take advantage of this mechanism and to be considered as a frontline country in hosting the flow of migrants to the EU.
A special meeting bringing together Greece, Italy, Hungary, France, Germany, the European Commission and the Luxembourg Presidency at the start of work on Monday had nevertheless been described as “constructive” by a French source. Yet the hopes of getting a system of hotspots (registration centres) accepted in Budapest vanished as the meeting went on. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker had nonetheless personally tried over the weekend to change Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's position.
Had the Luxembourg Presidency prepared the ground enough to foster this political agreement? Germany, through its home affairs minister Thomas de Maizière, seemed to question this. At a mid-way press briefing with his French counterpart, Bernard Cazeneuve, he spoke of proposals that were too “vague and not concrete enough”. At this stage of the ministerial meeting, the minister seemed confident, however, of the chances of the meeting ending successfully with a political agreement by consensus.
France focused on the positive points obtained on Monday, including “the need for controls at the EU's external borders through the establishment of hotspots”. “There was reluctance from some member states. Greece and Italy accepted. We together wanted them to be set up right away with the agreement of the whole Council”, Cazeneuve stated, adding: “We absolutely must arm Frontex with the means to enable it to organise the return of illegal economic migrants to the countries they came from and, for this, we would also like - and it's already in the principles - dialogue with the countries of origin to enable the conclusion of an agreement on the return of those who are in an illegal situation when they cross the EU's external borders”.
In concrete terms, with the formal approval of the 27 May proposal on the relocation of 40,000 asylum seekers from Syria, Iraq and Eritrea, the Italian and Greek hotspots, in Sicily and Piraeus, should start to be fully operational in the coming days.
The member states wanted on Monday to be very comprehensive on the role of these hotspots, with these having to be assimilated into administrative waiting areas, from which true asylum seekers would be identified and the people not able to claim EU protection sent back home. In the coming days, Italy is expected to report on how its hotspots work, and Greece is expeced to receive further financial and logistical support.
For the rest, the ministers very generally discussed the list of so-called safe countries proposed by the Commission on 9 September. The outcome for Turkey poses a problem. In Berlin's view, and that of the Luxembourg Presidency of the Council, only the Balkans countries should feature on this list of safe countries and not Turkey, due to the Kurdish issue. The means allocated for third countries currently hosting thousands of Syrian refugees - that is, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon - should also be strengthened, as should the financial support to the United Nations Higher Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Tension on Schengen. The meeting of home affairs ministers on Monday afternoon began in a particularly tense setting after Berlin's decision the previous day to re-establish border controls at its border with Austria. The European Commission has been notified of this decision. This, moreover, is the first time that the possibilities offered by the reform of the border code for the Schengen area, which was adopted in 2013 following the Arab Spring, have been used. Indeed Germany spoke of sudden migration pressure (over 20,000 people arrived in Munich in a day) which will enable it, if it deems it necessary, to extend these controls for a maximum of two months. On Monday, Austria also said that it would start controls at its borders so as to manage the flows of asylum seekers arriving from Hungary.
The text of the conclusions of the Presidency of the Council refers to these measures, underlining their provisional nature and the need to apply fully both the acquis on asylum and the Schengen acquis. (Solenn Paulic and Camille-Cerise Gessant)