Brussels, 14/07/2016 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 13 July, the Commission said that it was satisfied with recent relocation efforts made for asylum seekers from Greece and Italy and estimates that with 3056 people relocated out of 106,000, the pace of relocation has been stepped up. 2213 people have been relocated from Greece and 843 from Italy.
The Commission acknowledges, however, that the current pace of relocations "still falls far short of the Commission's proposed target of relocating 6,000 people per month". The Commission said that member states are not yet meeting the commitments they made under the Council Decisions on relocation.
With regard to resettlement, the Commission explains in its fifth progress report on the matter that 8208 people have been resettled from non-EU countries out of the 22,504 places promised in July 2015 to member states and a number of EU associated countries. The majority of the resettled refugees came from Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. They were taken in by 20 resettling countries (Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lichtenstein, Lithuania, Norway, Netherlands, Portugal, Czech Republic, United Kingdom, Sweden and Switzerland. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)