On Tuesday 16 May in Strasbourg, the European Commission called on the member states for the umpteenth time to respected their commitments on refugee relocations from Greece and Italy to the rest of the European Union.
The Commission, however, appeared to step up the pressure in its assertion that the member states that had so far failed to take in any asylum seekers on their respective soil – such as Poland, Hungary and even Austria – “are clearly in violation” of European law.
The Commissioner for Migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, provided assurances that if no action is taken by the time of the next report in June, the Commission will indeed launch “infringement procedures” against these countries. He said that this involved a question of “credibility” for the European Commission.
Poland and Slovakia have begun an appeal at the European Court of Justice to quash the European decision to proceed to the relocations of refugees. Pleas in this connection were also held on 10 May.
According to the most recent figures provided from the 12th report on relocation, the number of people relocated in 2017 reached the same percentage figure for relocations throughout the whole of 2016 and currently stand at a total of 18,418. 5711 of these are from Italy and 12,707 come from Greece. This figure is, however still nowhere near the commitments made in 2015 and which involved taking in 160,000 people.
Mr Avramopoulos explained to MEPs rather early on that “political will” remained the main difficulty for overcoming the problem of mutual distrust. He was delighted with the progress made but again pointed out that the member states were still not meeting their commitments on relocations.
The Commissioner said that he had had been in contact with the Austrian government, which had provided him with assurances that relocations would begin in Italy with 50 people. He informed the press that, “there are no concrete operational reasons not to undertake relocations”. He also said in passing that Slovakia and Bulgaria should also overcome their difficulties to take in asylum seekers and not to do this on the basis of certain preferences such as religious denomination.
Mr Avramopoulos also called on the member states to make the relocation of unaccompanied minors a priority, particularly from Greece. He also said that Italy had to, “urgently speed up procedures for identifying and registering, as soon as possible, all admissible candidates and to ensure that people eligible for relocation arriving in Italy are channelled in an orderly way towards specifically designated relocation centres”.
According to the Commission, “a certain number of member states are expected to increase their monthly promises”: Spain, Belgium and Croatia from Italy and Greece; Germany, Romania and Slovakia from Greece; France and Cyprus from Italy.
The European Parliament will be voting on a resolution on this subject this Wednesday in Strasbourg. (Solenn Paulic)