Strasbourg, 25/09/2015 (Agence Europe) - Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Nils Muiznieks welcomed the more human-rights-based approach to asylum now being adopted by the European Union but, at the same time, expressed concern at the political rhetoric being used in Hungary and said the Dublin regulation was ill adapted to face the current challenges.
He had been warning about migration for two years, he told a group of journalists in Strasbourg. “We are not dealing with a sudden event but a massive crisis”, he said. He argued that it was, in fact, a watershed moment that was casting doubt on the effectiveness of the Dublin regulation.
The EU, he said, was gradually adopting a more human-rights-based approach. He praised the speech delivered by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to the European Parliament on 9 September (see EUROPE 11385) and said the decisions taken by the member states of the EU at the extraordinary Council meeting on Wednesday 23 September (see EUROPE 11395) were “very good”.
Nonetheless, Muiznieks wondered about how the migrant reception and registration centres planned by the EU in Italy and Greece - the so-called “hotspots” - were to be put in place. He expressed concern that “the procedural guarantees on human rights” are “not absolutely clear”.
Speaking about Italy, where hotspots have been set up and are operating, he noted that “the Italian chief of police wonders if they will be manageable in the long run”. As for Greece, “where we have long seen systemic asylum problems”, with “migrants arriving on the islands in their thousands, which causes huge problems”, “we have to wonder how (the country) will manage to get on top of requests”. “And this is made all the more difficult for these two countries by the migrants not wanting to stay within their respective borders”, he added.
Many questions remain, then, to be answered, he said, such as how the “filters” will work, if nationality is to be one of the criteria, and whether legal assistance is to be provided.
He said that he supported the idea of quotas to share out the asylum seekers among the member states, noting “the international texts give refugees the right to protection but do not make provision for their being able to choose where they want to go”. However, he went on, “in the interests of integration, on the one hand, account will have to be taken of possible family ties in the host country and, on the other, it will be important to harmonise the status of refugees across the member states”. “At the present time, there are wide differences in terms of access to work, healthcare, housing assistance, etc. Issues such as these will have to be settled at Community level (because) they cannot be left to each individual state”, he said, adding that “standards are required”.
Turning his attention to Hungary, he stated that “this is not the first country to have built fences along its borders … Greece, Spain and Bulgaria have all done so”. He expressed concern at the “rhetoric” being used in the country: “What strikes me most is the political discourse, particularly as it is accompanied by racist publicity campaigns that assimilate migration and crime, heavily slanted questionnaires put to the people and the ban on public television showing images of children in their reports on migrants”. “This is unique in Europe”, he concluded (our translation throughout).
Muiznieks is planning to respond more comprehensively to what is happening in Hungary but only after closely examining the legislative changes that have been brought in, including the recent criminalisation of migrants and asylum seekers who cross into the country. It will have to be seen how this is implemented on the ground, he stressed. He has already, however, made clear his disagreement in principle with the legislative changes. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)