EU to negotiate all-new asylum processing plan
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – The European Union members’ interior ministers have been meeting in Luxemburg to hash out a new, continent-wide asylum processing plan. The existing system reached its breaking point over the past decade.
Under an existing agreement, any asylum seeker’s port-of-entry country is tasked with processing their application. This has put an undue burden on southern European countries, such as Italy, Greece and Spain, which are closer to established migration routes.
In order to avoid a humanitarian crisis on Europe’s borders, Germany, Austria and Sweden voluntarily accepted over a million refugees – many escaping Syria’s civil war – in 2015. Other EU members, however, like the eastern European Visegrad group, have closed off their countries to non-European refugees.
A new system, currently being discussed, would make assistance to migrants mandatory for all members, but could be financial rather than relying on migrant-sharing schemes, ABC News reports. Officials have circulated figures of around 20,000 euros ($21,400) per migrant.
To be passed, the plan would need a ‘qualified majority’ – or the support of countries representing roughly two-thirds of the Union’s population.
Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, representing nearly a fifth of the European Union’s population, has called the proposal “very difficult for us,” adding that, “I am fighting for us to have a Europe of open borders.”
To proposed deal does not address the sources of conflict leading to mass migration, nor will it ease the EU’s strict outer border policy, which has led to the deaths of over 25,700 migrants who drowned crossing the Mediterranean Sea since 2014. This policy has also led the EU to cut deals with unsavory governments, such as Turkey and Libya, in order to outsource the policing of the continent’s borders.
On June 4, at least 16 migrants, many from Syria’s Kobane, drowned off the coast of Algeria as they attempted to reach Europe.
Europe’s fortress mentality has not stopped migrants, who flee war, violence and poverty, from making the arduous journey. Some 966,000 applications for political protection were lodged in EU countries last year, up more than 50% from 2021.
The largest group outside of Ukrainians are Syrians, who filed 132,000 applications in 2022.
Roughly one million Syrian asylum-seekers and refugees live in the EU. Germany alone hosts around 59% of them. Across Europe, Syrians have usually been provided with international protection status. However, procedures tend to be long, which is why many Syrians have taken dangerous routes to reach the continent. Around 94,000 Syrians made their way to Europe illicitly in 2022, the EU says – more than double the number in 2021.