Asked by the Committee on Civil Liberties in the European Parliament (LIBE) on Tuesday 14 July about the external dimension of asylum, Henrik Nielsen, head of International Affairs, Returns and Visas at the European Commission, and Jean-Nicolas Beuze, representative of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for the EU, defended the creation of “multi-purpose centres” along migration routes, against a backdrop of controversy surrounding the new ‘Returns’ regulation (see EUROPE 13890/13).
These structures, which are defined as reception and guidance platforms, are intended to stabilise flows upstream. They combine the registration of migrants and a determination of their status, medical care and support towards legal mobility or voluntary returns.
The concept actually covers a wide variety of initiatives already in place such as: the Emergency Transit Mechanism in Rwanda, designed to evacuate vulnerable people from Libya; transit centres in Mauritania to identify people rescued at sea; resource centres in Iraq and Pakistan to prepare candidates for legal migration.
Mr Nielsen nevertheless rejected the idea of an “externalisation” of European migration policy, defending an approach of “responsibility sharing, not responsibility shifting”. In response to Marieke Ehlers (PfE, Dutch), who pointed out the lack of cooperation from some third countries, he announced that “conditionality” for European funding linked to the readmission of irregular migrants was being considered within the 2028–2034 Multiannual Financial Framework.
When questioned by Anna Strolenberg (Greens/EFA, Dutch) about the risk of coercive abuses in these centres, he admitted that the European Commission would have “no control” over structures financed exclusively by Member States’ own funds.
In any event, both speakers firmly denied any equivalence between the multi-purpose centres and the return centres sought by several Member States (see EUROPE 13894/13). Mr Beuze was himself fairly critical of this legislation, particularly the absence of automatic suspensive effect for appeals.
In response to Birgit Sippel (S&D, German), who questioned the autonomy of UNHCR in the work it undertook supervising fundamental rights, he acknowledged that the agency is facing an unprecedented financial crisis, having lost more than half its budget in 18 months as a result of American and European disengagement. Despite this, he sought to reassure members, stating that the organisation “would uphold those principles, whatever the funding situation is”. (Original version in French by Justine Manaud)