Strasbourg, 19/03/2007 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament wants there to be reliable figures for the European Union on immigration and international protection in 2008. The drawing up of a suitable EU asylum and immigration policy will require reliable statistics on the scale of immigration, where immigrants originate from, and flows of people into and out of the EU. Approving a report on 14 March by German EPP-ED MEP Ewa Klamt by 544 to19 with 56 abstentions, the European Parliament expressed a clear desire for the EU to have effective common rules on the collection of immigration statistics by the member states.
The report voted upon in first reading under the codecision procedure echoes the draft regulation unveiled in September 2005 by the European Commission (see EUROPE 9018), calling for a common legal basis in the member states for the gathering of statistics, and also the type of information to be collected and deadlines for data submission. Member states would have to regularly supply Eurostat with figures on immigration, emigration, international protection, residence, illegal immigration and deportations. The MEPs basically want estimates of the number of illegal aliens residing in each member state to not be counted unless the individuals in question are covered by administrative or legal decisions recognising their illegal situation and obliging them to leave the country. They also want information about the number of people from outside the EU who actually leave the EU following such decisions.
MEPs want the regulation to take account of statistics on the number of people whose initial requests for asylum have been rejected, declared inadmissible or unfounded, or are being decided by legal or administrative bodies under simplified or priority proceedings.
The proposal will soon become law because it was adopted in identical terms by the relevant Council working group. Diplomatic sources comment, however, that the regulation will force member states to provide statistics which they did not always do in the past. The sources suggest that some countries don't have the capacity to provide the European Commission with everything that is being requested. (bc)