Brussels, 27/02/2003 (Agence Europe) - Disagreements continue between Member States on defining the rights for refugees and persons benefiting from subsidiary protection. More than two hours of discussions on Thursday, did not allow for any breakthrough on the divergences that essentially focus (but not exclusively) on the differentiation to operate between the two categories benefiting from protection. Most blockages came from Germany, followed by Austria. At present, the German government is negotiating a new law on the subject with the local regions, after the call by the Constitutional Court approved the law last year. The German Minister of the Interior Otto Schily, can therefore not take any definitive position for the instant. He acknowledged to colleagues that he was optimistic about a sufficiently swift breakthrough that would allow the Council to respect its objective to adopt the directive by June as decided in Seville. The Greek Permanent Representative, Aristidis Agathocles, acknowledged that there had been a problem in reaching the Seville objectives because of the internal situation in Germany. He also declared that as far as he was aware, he did not see any great possibilities for resolving the German problem by June.
Access to jobs is the issue that is posed the most often as well as the problem of equal treatment for refugees and persons benefiting from subsidiary protection on a basis other than that of the Geneva Convention on refugees. Although the European Commission and the Greek Presidency have proposed that EU citizens have priority access to jobs for just a year following the granting of refugee status, Germany and Austria consider that there should be no time limit to priority for European citizens. There are other reservations on access to social welfare, health and accommodation. Germany is opposed to family members automatically having residency rights, whether they are refugees or people benefiting from subsidiary protection.
Finland, on the other hand believes that family members should have strictly the same rights. Supported by Finland, Sweden is requesting that they are given the same status (refugee or subsidiary) and that they have automatically the same rights (social, educational etc).
During the Danish Presidency, there was an agreement on the initial articles on conditions to fulfil for refugee status and subsidiary protection. Only Germany had reservations about it. the proposal was presented by the Commission October 2001. Once the directive is adopted, Member States will be expected to have two yeas to apply it.
Here are the other results of the Council:
Immigration: According to a Presidency document, Member States are faced with a difficult but unavoidable choice (financial) if they want to implement the policy announced for immigration. The Greeks are insisting that in order o have a global approach to the issue: "objective factors" for sharing costs of external border controls, the type of expenditure envisaged at Community level, European refugee funds, financial instrument for repatriation, assessment of cooperation with third countries.
Border controls: the Spanish Minister of the Interior, Angel Acebes, indicated to the press that there were grounds to believe that the Commission's proposals that it had to make by June on sharing border control costs, was going in the direction approved by Spain. This consists of sharing the costs between all Member States according to objective criteria,that included the number of immigrants taken in by each country. The Community budget is expected to contribute to it from 2004, according to the Spanish Minister.