European Commission Vice-President for the Promotion of the European Way of Life, Margarítis Schinás, and the Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, defended, on Thursday 13 January, in front of the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, the relevance of the proposal for an EU Council decision authorising Poland, Lithuania and Latvia to take exceptional measures to deal with migrants arriving at the border with Belarus (see EUROPE 12844/11).
The Vice-President, who has been at the forefront of this debate, has repeatedly stressed that this proposal is fully in line with the Treaty and Article 78.3, which allows for emergency responses. He also stressed that the Commission had responded with its proposal of 1 December to a concrete request from the European Council to present measures quickly.
Several MEPs had questioned the usefulness of these measures, the urgency of which, they say, has not necessarily been demonstrated. Spanish Socialist Domènec Ruiz Devesa called on the Commission to “withdraw” the text, recalling that Poland remains sceptical about its content and “is not cooperating”. He said he felt that Lithuania and Latvia could be helped in other ways.
For his French colleague Sylvie Guillaume, these new measures are not really necessary, given that legislative proposals have already been on the table since 2016 and 2020 with the new ‘Asylum Pact’, and that this text of 1 December further restricts the rights of asylum seekers.
The MEP said she regretted that the Commission did not tackle the Belarusian regime, which had engaged in trafficking in human beings, but instead turned its attention to the people who were victims. The MEP advocated for avoiding a dangerous precedent and questioned whether it would not be “more appropriate to move forward with the regulation on crisis situations and force majeure” (contained in the Pact on Migration and Asylum).
The MEP Jeroen Lenaers (EPP Netherlands) said that he did not want to go back over the merits of the proposal, which had already been discussed in plenary in December (see EUROPE 12855/17), but wanted to know why Cyprus was not eligible for such emergency aid under Article 78.3, as the country had in fact requested.
The vice-president said that Frontex is “currently in discussions with Cyprus for practical assistance”, with Margarítis Schinás also expected to be in Cyprus “within the next 10 days”. For the Vice-President, the two situations are different, as the ‘green line’ in Cyprus cannot be considered an external border in the strict sense. “But it must be possible to organise patrols along the Green Line”, he added.
The Dutch Renew Europe MEP, Sophie in ‘t Veld, questioned how it was possible that the EU could not handle “a few thousand people” and had to propose emergency measures to deal with them.
Invited to take part in the discussion, the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) expressed their doubts. For FRA, the fundamental rights of migrants and asylum seekers must be better guaranteed in the text and their needs, including material needs, must be better provided for.
For ECRE, this Article 78.3 is not the right one, as it corresponds to mass influx situations. The NGO is also concerned about the measures contained in the proposal, such as the extension of the time limits for registration of applications.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, who had also been invited, called for all efforts to be made to ensure that Member States resist the temptation to change asylum laws and to not turn their backs on the reality of pushbacks at the EU’s external borders. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)