MEPs on the European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE) held a first exchange of views on Tuesday 23 June on the report by Fabienne Keller (Renew Europe, France) on the assessment of the so-called Dublin 3 Regulation, which lays down the criteria for determining the responsibility of a Member State in an asylum application.
Mrs Keller's report (see EUROPE 12507/15) seeks to make up for the lack of an assessment of this regulation, an evaluation that the Commission was already due to make in 2018. It also comes at a time when the Commission is expected to publish its new Pact on Asylum and Migration in the coming months, but perhaps not before September, as Commissioner Ylva Johansson made clear on 19 June, saying that the Commission was first waiting for an agreement of the EU27 on the recovery plan and the European budget.
The report was generally well received. It identifies the imbalances, administrative burdens and inequalities that the current Dublin Regulation places on Member States. The MEP for Renew Europe recalled that between 2008 and 2017, only 1/3 of Member States received 90% of asylum seekers in the EU. In 2018, Germany, France, Greece, Italy and Spain received the bulk of the requests.
She pointed out that the number of Dublin procedures, those procedures which consist in sending an applicant back to the first country responsible for his or her application, has increased over the years and that the administrative burden for the authorities concerned has been increased for “only 11% of transfers actually taking place”.
Keller said she has never seen “such an administrative monster for so little results”.
Her report also identifies problems related to secondary movements and addresses the problem of asylum applications lodged by people arriving legally in the EU, with or without a visa.
This is partly the criticism levelled at her by some MEPs who wanted her report to be limited to the Dublin Regulation and not deal with the related texts that make up the body of European asylum rules (such as the Reception Conditions Directive).
French Green MEP Damien Carême, for the Greens/EFA group, also criticised her for not sacrificing the first country of entry rule, a criterion which implies that the first country of arrival in the EU must register the applicant's data in the Eurodac system, which then involves transfers from country to country if the person has gone to another country to lodge another asylum application.
While some MEPs contested the scope of the report, all agreed that the European asylum policy needs to be reformed. “Dublin doesn't work”, commented Italian Socialist Pietro Bartolo. “It is the first country of arrival criterion that makes the system unfair and inefficient”, he said.
He recalled that in 2016, the Parliament had already identified the shortcomings of Dublin, in particular on the criterion of family ties, which was insufficiently taken into account. In addition, the Parliament had also decided in 2017 on an automatic and compulsory relocation of all asylum seekers arriving in the EU, regardless of crises.
The European Parliament had indeed largely supported this request made by the then rapporteur, Cecilia Wikström (ALDE, Sweden). The Renew Europe MEP should in theory take up this request when the Commission presents its new Dublin reform.
Mrs Keller's report contains a short draft resolution calling for more solidarity in reception through relocation and open to amendments. The submission deadline is 6 July. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)