Luxembourg, 29/04/2004 (Agence Europe) - After three and a half years of debates, ministers of the interior from the Fifteen reached an agreement on Thursday on minimum common rules for examination of asylum requests: examination of the demand, the appeal, criteria for judging the demands which are unfounded were all concluded in time, before 1 May and implementation of a basis for a European asylum policy as included in the Treaty of Amsterdam. Nevertheless, reaching unanimity on this draft was very difficult and the result is an extremely low common denominator, allowing for many derogataions. NGOs denounce "a catalogue of the worst practices". On the contrary, the acting president of the Council Michael McDowell like European Commissioner Antonio Vitorino welcomed the agreement as the missing link in the first phase of a common European asylum policy. Countries that are reticent about the agreement think that at this stage it is not possible to adopt a more ambitious text.
Debates at the Council and meetings on Thursday were described as difficult. Belgium was followed timidly by Sweden launched the last lap of honour but most ministers, within the perspective of moving to qualified majority voting on asylum as soon as the text is definitively approved, were ready to agree to it. The United Kingdom and Germany insisted that the text allowed them to keep their national provisions. Finally with a few modifications, particularly on the notion of third countries, the text was approved by all. The Swedish minister for immigration Barbro Holmberg assured that the amendments would allowed for smoothing out the worries of the High Commission for Refugees at the UN (EUROPE 28 April p 10).
The directive is expected to be presented to the European Parliament, whose opinion is necessary but not binding. The text will should therefore be definitively approved before autumn. On Thursday the Council definitively approved the directive on the status of refugees (EUROPE 31 March p 11