Migration can under no circumstances be used as a “negotiating” or a “bargaining tool”, said Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos on Wednesday 16 October in response to new threats from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to let millions of migrants into the EU. But the Greek government must also do its job, and the procedures for examining asylum applications must be improved to relieve the camps on the Greek islands and facilitate returns to Turkey “or other countries”.
The Eastern Mediterranean, as further demonstrated by new statistics from the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (ex-Frontex) on 16 October, is the most sensitive area at present, with detections of more than 11,500 irregular arrivals to Greece in September, up 14% compared to August. Two-thirds of the migrants counted in the EU in September arrived in this area of the Aegean Sea.
Mr Avramopoulos spoke on current events during the presentation of progress reports on the European Agenda on Migration. His overall observation: the EU is, according to him, better “equipped” today to respond to a massive influx than it was in 2015, even if there is still work to be done.
On this subject, the Commissioner expressed his great disappointment that the reform of the Dublin Regulation had not been completed under his mandate.
But arrivals remain well below 2015 levels: in 2018, 150,000 detections of irregular passages were recorded in the EU.
For the rest, the Commission presented positive news: with an increase in the number of European agency staff deployed in European hotspots (“2,300 agents deployed on the ground”), there have been increased efforts to resettle refugees on European soil (63,000 people over the last 5 years - including 25,000 Syrians from Turkey resettled since 2016 in 18 Member States - and resettlement commitments for 30,000 people in 2020). The Commission also welcomed the financial support provided by Member States to non-Member States, with an “unprecedented” financial mobilisation of €9.7 billion between the Trust Fund for Africa, the Refugee Facility in Turkey and the Trust Fund for Syria.
While EU action on rescue and maritime search operations was criticised and the Malta agreement of 23 September on temporary regimes for disembarkation of migrants rescued at sea is struggling to develop, the Commission recalls in its communication that nearly 760,000 lives have been saved at sea and nearly 23,000 migrants have been saved in the Niger desert since 2015.
Internally, the report indicates that 34,700 people have been relocated from Greece and Italy to other Member States, and internal funds to help Member States manage migration have reached €10 billion.
Link to the Commission's assessment: https://bit.ly/2qjtK1M (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)