Meeting in a more relaxed atmosphere without any big migration controversies hanging over it, the European summit stressed the need over dinner on Thursday 20 October to continue working on targeted migration partnerships with countries in Africa from which many economic migrants hail who take the central Mediterranean route to the EU. They also spoke of the need to agree in December on a foreign investment fund to financially back the partnerships.
The EU28 leaders gave the go-ahead to the idea that the Slovak Presidency of the Council of the EU should unveil proposals in December about what ‘flexible solidarity’ could look like for dealing with and integrating asylum-seekers, a concept put forward by a number of Central European nations (see EUROPE 11589).
During the two-hour dinner, the question came up of solidarity among member states on asylum issues, said President of the European Council Donald Tusk after the meeting in the early hours of Thursday 20 October. While the main discussion on the different forms of solidarity provided by EU member states is expected to take place at the December summit, there were talks on Thursday, said Tusk, about the fact that solidarity cannot be à la carte, but must be effective. Some countries, like Luxembourg, said that they do not believe in the concept of flexible solidarity and there could not be ‘variable geometry’ solidarity, said Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel on Friday.
During the talks, three of the Visegrad countries (Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) managed to have their views heard about the renewed efforts requested by the summit on relocating asylum-seekers. They had a footnote added to the conclusions document stating that implementation of these efforts must be made without prejudice to the position of Hungary and Slovakia, backed by Poland, which have taken the European Council decision on the compulsory relocation of refugees to the Court of Justice (2015/1601) (see EUROPE 11433).
Continuing to work on revision of the Dublin asylum system.
The summit’s conclusions document does not challenge reform of the European asylum system or review of the Dublin Regulation (see EUROPE 11545). On Friday, President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker even welcomed the fact that the EU28 were keeping the draft revision as initially tabled and were pledging to adopt it as soon as possible.
The European summit simply called at this stage for a continuation of work on reform of the European common asylum system, particularly on how to apply the principles of responsibility and solidarity in the future, saying it will return to this issue in December.
A European source said on Thursday 20 October that work on reform of the asylum system, which is opposed by the Visegrad nations because of the permanent corrector mechanisms for relocation that it contains, had not advanced far enough for the EU28 to be able to get down to real work.
The talks were positive enough, however, for Poland's Prime Minister Beata Szydło to welcome them, saying she was delighted because she felt there was an opening for reform of the EU’s asylum policy that was going in the right direction. Speaking after the summit, she appreciated the fact that talks had taken place to put an end to the compulsory refugee quota system through introduction of flexibility solidarity. Szydlo said the Visegrad group would come up with tangible proposals for December.
Speeding up return of illegal aliens.
The conclusions document talks about the need to speed up the return of illegal immigrants from the EU. People whose request for asylum has been rejected in Greece should be sent to Turkey, explained the European Council, and to this end, Greece needs to improve its procedures for processing asylum requests. On Friday, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel met Greek Prime Minister AlexisTsipras on the question of refugees, the idea being to promise support for Greece in the form of sending German civil servants to the European Asylum Support Office (EASO).
Welcoming the fact that the European Border and Coast Guard Agency has become operational (see EUROPE 11644), member states of the Schengen area of free movement endorsed in the conclusions document the principle of extending controls at internal borders, such as those carried out by five nations (Germany, Austria, Sweden, Denmark and Norway). The European Commission will decide on extension of these controls by 12 November.
Some countries, such as Slovenia, are unhappy about the controls. The summit’s conclusions do not mention any commitment to a timeline for removing the internal border controls, simply talking about the possibility of adjusting temporary controls at internal borders in the light of current needs. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic with Aminata Niang, Elodie Lamer and Jan Kordys)