Strasbourg, 31/01/2000 (Agence Europe) - By adopting the report by the Socialist Boriss Cilevics on the restrictions towards asylum rights in the member States of the Council of Europe and the European Union, the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly asked that the future joint system of the EU's right of asylum offers insufficient protection to those concerned and indicated increased co-ordination of right to asylum policies and immigration between EU Member States and those of the Council of Europe. The Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers is invited to start an action in view of the incorporation of the right of asylum in the European Human Rights Convention and to form, in close co-operation with the EU, a European Convention on the harmonisation of asylum policies.
Furthermore, the Member States of the Council of Europe, are invited to recognise in their procedures to determine the status of refugees that: - persecution can be done to people without ties to their state of origin and over which the state has no control; - war and violence can be used, in view of oppressing or eliminating certain groups due to their ethnicity or other characteristics; - asylum seekers should not be held to prove that they have exhausted all the possibilities of finding a safe haven in their own country before asking for international protection; - women have the right to make an application separately from their spouse.