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EU faces ‘harder climate’ to break asylum reform deadlock
LUXEMBOURG, June 5, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – EU countries conceded Tuesday they
were a long way from breaking a two-year deadlock over reforming the bloc’s
asylum rules by a deadline this month amid a “harder political climate”
following right-wing election gains in Italy.
Key European Union ministers and officials meeting in Luxembourg were
lukewarm or even opposed to Bulgaria’s new compromise plan on how to close an
east-west rift over the reforms before a June 28-29 summit in Brussels.
“The current state of negotiations is not acceptable,” Stephan Mayer, a
senior German interior ministry official, told reporters as he arrived for
the talks. “We are not ready to accept it (the plan).”
Mayer, whose country is Europe’s top migrant destination, said Italy, its
southern EU neighbours and eastern European countries also criticised at
least parts of the plan.
Migration Minister Helene Fritzon of Sweden, a key migrant destination,
said chances of a compromise may even be tougher following right-wing gains
in elections in Italy and Slovenia.
“It is a harder climate, a harder political climate in Europe today,”
Fritzon told reporters.
Coming to power amid public discontent over the migration and unemployment
crises, Italy’s populist coalition government has denounced the draft
reforms.
“Italy and Sicily cannot be Europe’s refugee camp,” new hardline interior
minister Matteo Salvini said Sunday in Sicily’s port of Pozzallo, a migrant
landing point.
The reforms, he said, condemn Italy and other Mediterranean countries to
continue bearing the burden of an unprecedented migration crisis for the 28-
nation bloc, which peaked in 2015.
Standing in for Salvini in Luxembourg is Maurizio Massari, Italy’s envoy
to the EU in Brussels.
EU leaders in December set an end-of-June deadline for an overhaul of the
so-called Dublin rules to create a permanent mechanism to deal with migrants
in the event of a new emergency.
Under existing rules, countries where migrants first arrive are required
to process asylum requests. Italy, Greece and Spain are the main entry points
to Europe.
EU cooperation deals with Turkey and Libya, the main transit countries,
have helped to slow, at least for now, the flow of migrants to Europe since
2015.
Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have either refused
outright or resisted taking in refugees since the Commission first pushed
through temporary quotas in 2015 as a way to ease the burden on frontline
states Italy and Greece.
– ‘Alleviating burden’ –
The summer of that year saw a surge in mass drownings in the Mediterranean
as Europe’s worst migration crisis since World War II peaked with hundreds of
thousands of people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Under an emergency plan, EU member countries agreed to relocate to other
parts of the bloc 160,000 Syrians and other refugees from Italy and Greece
within two years.
Only 34,690 people have been relocated as most people made their own way
to Germany and other wealthy northern countries amid the chaotic EU response
to the crisis.
According to documents seen by AFP, Bulgaria calls for “alleviating (the)
burden from the front-line” states and “curbing secondary movements” of
asylum seekers who land in one EU country and travel to another.
Eastern countries place a priority on stopping secondary movements, which
caused so much chaos in recent years that countries in Europe’s passport-free
Schengen zone re-established border checks.
In a nod to Rome and Athens, the Bulgarian proposals call for the
compulsory relocation of asylum seekers, but only as a last resort.
At the outset of a crisis, financial and other support are supposed to
kick in automatically under the plan.
EU capitals like Budapest, which has spearheaded opposition to Muslim and
other migrants, have stood firm against mandatory relocation.
As a further sop to the eastern countries, people will be relocated only
in exceptional cases and member states will have the “flexibility” to reduce
some of the numbers allotted to them.
Under the proposal, frontline states face increased “responsibility” to
register arrivals.
Dimitris Avramopoulos, the EU commissioner for migration, played down the
importance of the June 30 deadline.
“If we have to extend it for some weeks, it is not the end of the world,”
Avramopoulos told reporters.
BSS/AFP/RY/1705 hrs