Luxembourg, 31/01/2005 (Agence Europe) - On Saturday at the informal Council, Member States confirmed their intention to develop a common policy on asylum in third countries but have still not provided the details for this policy. Member States support the development of reception centres in countries of origin or transit of the asylum seekers but they do not agree on the question of re-installation, namely, to do this in the refugees' third countries. This external asylum policy, with its two regional protection sections and re-installation of refugees, should be set up step by step by beginning with pilot projects. The 25 are now waiting for the Commission to come up with proposals on in by July at the latest.
In some regions, the EU may have to initiate pilot projects but this has not yet been decided. On Saturday, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Great Lakes region were often been mentioned as possible areas for this, in connection with the regions of origin of the migrants and North Africa and neighbouring East European EU countries for transit regions. Contrary to the informal Scheveningen Council a the end of September, where the objective of developing an external asylum policy was affirmed for the first time, ministers did not highlight the issue of refugee camps in third countries (on Saturday). They were more keen on stressing the need for developing the countries' capacity, in the regions of origin or transit, to take on refugees in the context of setting up refugee centres but this cannot be summarised as such. In addition to the humanitarian aspects (avoiding a situation where asylum seekers have to cross the whole of Africa, a the mercy of traffickers), external asylum policy will be a policy outlining the fight against illegal immigration, with the objective of having fewer illegal immigrant candidates arriving in the EU under cover of seeking asylum or otherwise. The Council for once recognised that several ministers had underlined that asylum and immigration policy was linked. JHA Council president Nicolas Schmit said that foreign policy could not be divorced from the issue. He declared that “We can no longer separate immigration and asylum policy from our external policy or from our development policy”. Justice and home affairs Commissioner, Franco Frattini, had already held discussions with countries “in close coordination with Louis Michel”, Commissioner for development. The Commission underlined that this cooperation had to be seen in the overall context, including the question of readmission of illegal immigrants and facilitating the granting of visas.
Addressing ministers on Saturday, the UN High Commissioner Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, criticised Member States for not having sufficiently received refuges thorugh the UN reinstallation programmes. Nicolas Schmit said that Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA offred to set up 100,000 places last year and the EU and USA just 4,700. Schmit recognised that on the question of reinstallation it was true that divergences existed and that there were those who thought that it should be promoted more pro-actively while others were more cautious. Barbro Holmberg, Swedish minister of immigration and asylum whose country, like Denmark and the United Kingdom were proceeding to re-installations, observed that reinstallation had to be complementary to aid to regions of origin and development cooperation. France was the only country that was openly reticent to the reinstallation programmes and highlighted the fact that they had to work on a voluntary basis.