The European Commission presented a new draft migration reform: 10,000 euros will be paid for accepting an adult migrant
"We must find a long-term solution to the migration problem," Ursula von der Leyen emphasized on September 23, presenting the EU migration reform proposal. According to her, "the fire in the migrant camp on the Greek island of Moria is proof of that."
The long-awaited draft provides for the abandonment of the Dublin Regulation, which determines the procedure for granting political asylum in the EU, and of attempts to introduce mandatory quotas for accepting refugees for all 27 member states. Instead, all EU countries will now have to share the costs of deporting those migrants who have been denied asylum. As RFI notes, the draft also promises to strengthen border controls in a united Europe.
The Dublin Regulation has been increasingly criticized since 2015, when Europe experienced a "migration crisis" – in just one year, more than a million refugees arrived in the Schengen area. Since then, the number of arrivals has significantly decreased (in 2019, the number of illegal arrivals seeking asylum in Europe was about 140,000 people), but the problems of their accommodation remain the same. Greece and Italy continue to receive the largest number of illegally entering EU refugees, while the Visegrad Group countries (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Slovakia) still refuse to take on their allocated quotas.
To stop the periodic disputes among the 27 EU countries, the European Commission finally proposed a draft that Brussels officials presented as maximally compromise-oriented.
First, the European Commission decided to abolish the main point of the Dublin Regulation – the responsibility for examining an asylum application lies with the country where the migrant first entered EU territory. Greece and Italy most strongly objected to this rule. Now the European Commission proposes that the "responsible" country for accepting a refugee should be the one where the migrant has relatives, or where they previously studied or worked, or the country that issued them an entry visa.
In other cases, the obligation to process applications falls on the "country of first arrival," which, if necessary, can request the activation of the so-called "mandatory solidarity mechanism." This mechanism provides for assistance from other states, proportional to their economic development and population size. As assistance, these states can choose either to accept migrants on their territory or to bear the costs of deporting them to third countries.
In addition, they can provide their officials and specialists to strengthen borders or work in refugee camps. Moreover, a country that chooses to accept refugees will receive a reward from the EU: 10,000 euros for each adult and 12,000 for each minor.
Thus, in the event of a new "migration crisis," states must share the costs of "relocating" refugees to other EU countries or deporting them to their home countries. According to the reform draft, an EU country has the right to deport refugees within eight months of their arrival; after this period, it is obliged to accept them.
Returning refugees to their home countries is one of the main focuses of the EU migration reform draft. For this purpose, mechanisms are provided for "intensifying" negotiations with countries from which the main flow of refugees originates, or so-called "transit countries." To this end, the European Commission plans to create a special position of "coordinator," who will be assisted by "experts" invited from the 27 European countries. Currently, there are 24 readmission agreements between the EU and third countries, but "not all of these agreements work," the European Commission notes.
Rules for forced deportation are also provided, as according to statistics, only a third of migrants who have been denied the right to asylum in the EU actually return to their home countries. And while in 2015 about 90% of migrants arriving in the EU received refugee status, currently more than 60% are, on the contrary, denied asylum.
Finally, a separate point of the reform is dedicated to NGOs that rescue refugees at sea – they are promised legal immunity.
Overall, the EU member states approved the draft, but each continued to insist on its own demands. Thus, Italy called the draft "an important but insufficient step," while Hungary demanded guarantees of the "inviolability" of its borders.
Many experts and NGOs assessed the migration reform draft extremely disapprovingly. Belgian scholar Françoise Gemene called it "a compromise between cowardice and xenophobia." And the human rights organization Oxfam accused the European Commission of pandering to countries that advocate strict immigration restrictions. "We cannot base our policy on Polish or Hungarian extremism, which, unfortunately, the European Commission is doing," said Guy Verhofstadt, a Member of the European Parliament from Belgium.