On Wednesday 8 February, the First Vice President of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans, announced that the Commission would decide in March on what options should be taken in the domain of asylum seeker relocation from Greece and Italy to other member states.
He explained that the efforts made by the latter are still insufficient for reducing pressure on these two countries but the Dutch official did not mention any infringement procedures. He did, however, say that the Commission would again examine the situation when a report is presented in March and that they would “see if other options are necessary…”.
Frans Timmermans said that it was totally “unfair to leave the whole burden on Greece and Italy” and called on member states to take urgent action in the pursuit of asylum seeker relocation.
So far, 11,966 people have been relocated in the EU. 8766 from Greece and 3,200 from Italy. In September 2015, Ministers for the Interior agreed on relocating 160,000 people by September 2017. They subsequently set out a reserve of 54,000 places from this quota for resettlement places as part of the EU-Turkey agreement.
Mr Timmermans pointed out that relocation efforts had had more of an impact recently but member states were still not sufficiently helping Greece. The Commissioner called for member states to show some political will and to persevere.
In December 2016, the Commission called on every member state to redouble their efforts for reaching the objectives of 1,000 monthly relocations from Italy and 2.000 from Greece. Member states and associated countries that are already actively participating in the relocation programme responded favourably to the Commission appeal and are meeting their planned monthly commitments.
A press release explained that “Finland is well on the way to meeting its commitment on relocations from Greece (560 people out of 1.299 have been relocated until now) and from Italy (359 out of 779”. “On the other hand, significantly higher commitments are still required from other member states, particularly those that have not undertaken any relocations at all”. This is particularly the case with Hungary. Slovakia has relocated nine people from Greece. France has relocated 2,245 people, followed by Germany, with 1,732 people.
In terms of resettlement, the member states have taken in 13,968 people out of their commitment made in July 2015 to resettle 22,504 people. Since the previous report, 913 people have been resettled, mainly from Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. Since 4 April 2016, 3,098 Syrians have been resettled in the EU from Turkey as part of the EU/Turkey agreement. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)