JUST six out of 25 European Union states declared themselves ready by yesterday’s deadline to adopt new rules aimed at ensuring that asylum-seekers get equal treatment across the bloc, the European Commission said.
National discrepancies have led to “asylum-shopping” where refugees target countries most likely to accept them. A Chechen refugee from Russia, for example, has an 84 per cent chance of being accepted by Austria but only 23 per cent in Germany.
“This is particularly regrettable,” said EU Justice Commission Franco Frattini of the fact that only Estonia, Lithuania, Austria, France, Slovenia and Luxembourg had declared they were ready to apply a common criteria for asylum requests.
In Cyprus, the transposition of the directive is on-going and at this stage a draft law is being discussed at the Ministry of Interior in close consultation with UNHCR Cyprus. It is expected to be presented before Parliament by the end of this year.
“The importance of this directive cannot be underestimated. It guarantees that the protection needs of asylum-seekers will be assessed according to the same criteria wherever they make their claim in Europe,” Commissioner Frattini said in a statement.
“This directive is meant to be the cornerstone of the emerging common European asylum system,” said Pirkko Kourula, director of UNHCR’s Europe Bureau.
“It seeks to establish a uniform understanding of who is entitled to protection. This is very much needed, for although every asylum application must be examined on its merits, the chance of finding protection in the EU ranges from zero to over 80 per cent for certain nationalities, depending on where they apply.”
The apparent lack of enthusiasm in most capitals for common asylum rules comes despite their repeated pledges to co-ordinate national policy to deal with an influx of illegal immigrants arriving on the EU’s southern shores from Africa.
It is the second setback this year for Commission efforts to shape a common EU asylum policy. EU members disagreed in May over which non-EU countries should be deemed safe enough for most asylum requests from them to be dismissed.
Ambiguities in the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees had led to “strange, huge discrepancies” in the way European countries, each with different historical ties to the rest of the world, viewed asylum requests, the Commission said.
“The aim is to create a more level-playing field on asylum in Europe,” said Frattini
spokesman Friso Roscam Abbing, noting that in some cases a refugee whose predicament was a guarantee of acceptance in one EU state would have no chance in another.
The EU directive also offers protection for those who would fall outside the scope of the 1951 convention, including victims of civil war, and those persecuted because of their sexuality or gender – for example, a woman facing genital mutilation.
Abbing said the EU Commission had the right to launch legal action against those states who did not hurry to transpose the directive into their national law.
UNHCR has said the Directive’s provisions do not go far enough. “Nevertheless, it is a first step towards a harmonised system in Europe and could offer security to many who have fled civil wars, ethnic cleansing and other human rights violations,” said Kourula.
“Europe should be proud of its tradition of giving asylum to those fleeing persecution and human rights violations. Living up to our legal and moral obligations to refugees and asylum seekers is one way of fulfilling our responsibility to protect,” she added.
The humanitarian plight of thousands of illegal immigrants arriving by boat to the southern states of the EU has exposed deep divisions within the wealthy bloc on the sensitive policy area.
Spain and other southern states, including Cyprus, have accused their northern neighbours of not helping them with the funding and resources to deal with the problem.
Germany has accused Madrid of making things worse by choosing to regularise many illegal migrants.
The issue has made headlines across Europe and been used by some on the far-right to justify anti-immigrant policies.
However, figures from the UN refugee agency show asylum requests to its member states have fallen consistently in the past four years.
