The European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE) adopted the report by Fabienne Keller (Renew Europe, France) on the implementation of the current rules of the Dublin system, which sets out the responsibilities of Member States with regard to processing asylum applications, by 45 votes to 10, with 13 abstentions.
The report highlights the dysfunctions of the current system but does not deal with the new proposals in the Pact on Migration and Asylum.
This meant that the MEPs on LIBE were required to avoid interfering in the upcoming discussions on the Pact. They therefore chose to send out a few key messages, noting initially that, in their opinion, “the current rules do not guarantee” an equitable distribution of responsibilities between Member States.
Countries on the front line have “a disproportionate responsibility with regard to the registration and reception of asylum seekers” and, in the absence of new rules, “more resources will need to be allocated to Member States on the front line”.
In her report, Keller focuses on poor application of the hierarchy of criteria and on dysfunctions such as the “Dublin transfers” (the return of asylum seekers to the countries responsible for them), which are costly, administratively unwieldy and often not carried out. The MEPs also criticised the disproportionate responsibilities placed on the frontline countries when there are mass arrivals. This is a situation that the new Pact seeks to address, either through relocation or additional returns, while at the same time imposing new obligations.
With regard to solidarity, the MEPs did not call for compulsory relocation, as this implementation report was not seen as the right context for getting that message across.
The LIBE MEPs nevertheless stressed that “ad hoc relocation agreements (as with Malta’s voluntary scheme, for example) are no substitute for a harmonised and sustainable EU asylum system”. The European Parliament will adopt the text in plenary in December.
The report can be found at: https://bit.ly/2JsZYS7 (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)