Brussels, 08/12/2015 (Agence Europe) - EU leaders meeting on 17 and 18 December will again underline the urgency with which solutions must be found to the malfunctions apparent in implementing “hotspots” for identifying and registering migrants who have arrived in Greece or Italy in the last few months and on which the relocation of 160,000 refugees over two years has been made conditional.
According to draft conclusions dated Monday 7 December, a copy of which has been obtained by EUROPE, the member states will seek to agree a new timetable for bringing additional hotspots on stream, and thus acknowledge the failure of the initial deadline they had set themselves at the end of September. At an extraordinary meeting, the European leaders decided that all the hotspots should be operational before the end of November (see EUROPE 11395). However, of the 11 centres planned, only two are currently fully operational - those at Lampedusa and Lesbos (see EUROPE 11442).
According to the draft conclusions, the leaders might also reiterate their call for “measures” to be taken to discourage migrants who refuse to be registered, something that has been identified as one of the problems holding up relocation. They might also, at the same time, state that the relocation orders taken in September must be implemented more swiftly, when, to date, barely 160 people have been relocated from Greece and Italy.
Other member states could also seek to be included in the relocation mechanism. Hitherto, only Sweden has asked to be included along with Greece and Italy but its request has not yet been approved by the other member states. At the Home Affairs Council on Friday 4 December, Belgium and Hungary indicated that they were not happy about extension of the mechanism to include other countries, arguing that this could damage the very principle of relocation (see EUROPE 11446).
Combination of resettlement and relocation? There are a number of unknowns as to the real intentions of the European leaders. While the draft conclusions state that they want to speed up the relocation orders, Luxembourg Asylum and Migration Minister Jean Asselborn said in an interview with Süddeutsche Zeitung on Monday 7 December that 50,000 people, currently in Turkey, could be resettled in Europe and this number could be deducted from the 160,000 relocations.
Resettlement of Syrian refuges from Turkey is part of the joint action plan agreed between EU and Ankara in October and finalised at the EU-Turkey summit on 29 November (see EUROPE 11441). An informal meeting of countries interested in resettlement of refugees from Turkey took place on the same day, at the initiative of Germany, but the idea is for a purely voluntary mechanism. Relocation orders are binding and the European Commission made clear on Tuesday 8 December that the two mechanisms were, in its view, separate and distinct. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)