Five countries from the south of the European Union (Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta and Spain) have published a common position on reform of the Dublin Regulation, in which they highlight certain aspects of the reform that are not satisfactory in the work currently being conducted at the Council. The letter containing this common position was revealed by Politico and mentions, in particular, the work done thus far on "Dublin pre-controls", a prior verification of asylum request files, and the length of the member states' 'stable' responsibility, which they want to have changed from ten years (as proposed by the Bulgarian Presidency) to two years.
The pre-controls, introduced in the reforms presented in 2016, involve a member state making an initial assessment of admissibility for a request, on the basis of the concept of first asylum country or safe third country. If this request is deemed unfounded, the person will be sent to the first country of asylum that can be the first country of the EU through which they entered European soil. This first country will then be responsible for handling the file (possibly through a fast-track procedure) and will see the normal Dublin rules are applied – in other words, it will not be able to play the criterion of transfers from country to country.
These five countries from the south of the EU do not want obligatory systematic pre-controls. In normal or difficult circumstances, they could be obligatory on just the control aspects linked to public security. Furthermore, these pre-controls should not automatically define the responsibility of a member state with regard to asylum seekers. These candidates should, as a general rule, also be eligible for mechanisms for redistributing asylum seekers between the member states.
On one of the most controversial measures of the reform proposal (in other words, the obligatory relocation of a certain number of asylum seekers), these five southern EU countries are also opposed to the ideas of the Presidency to enable alternative solidarity measures to relocation like, they write, resettlement and financial aid of €30,000 to countries in difficulty instead of the relocation of asylum seekers. The group of five countries believes the solidarity measures should have an immediate positive impact, which would not be the case with these other two measures.
On the length of 'stable' responsibility, the Council's work has removed the notion of permanent responsibility of a member state as proposed by the Commission in May 2016 to the benefit of the notion of 'stable'. The Bulgarian Presidency has proposed a period of ten years in connection with the general length of conservation provided for Eurodac, but these countries want a period of two years.
The document also focuses on other aspects of the regulation, like the procedures to be followed by member states in case of crisis. The five countries want these procedures to be more flexible when the countries are overrun with requests. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)