“Careful, the doors are closing!” – this is how one could characterize the main idea put into the document by fifty heads of European ministries during their Luxembourg summit. From now on, Europe officially halts the flow of refugees from countries that will be considered safe – asylum seekers from there will simply have no chance of obtaining it. According to Eurocrats, nothing threatens their lives at home.
Talk about reducing refugee flows to Europe has been going on for years. It is generally agreed that the European Union has long needed a common policy and common rules in this area, but so far no progress has been observed in this regard. Each EU country sets its own rules. Now, it seems, this confusion is coming to an end.
The EU directive on asylum law, adopted at the end of 2005, allows European Union states to supplement the “list of safe states” at their discretion. In addition, transit states through which refugees entered Europe may also be included in this list. If the host country considers such a “third state” safe, the illegal migrant will be sent there.
This decision is forced. According to statistics, from 80 to 90% of so-called political refugees are economic refugees; nothing threatens them at home. Rather, their lives are in danger precisely because they try to enter Europe illegally and fall into the hands of smuggler gangs.
The results of the Luxembourg conference outraged many human rights organizations, whose representatives believe that each application should be considered individually. They intend to protest against the creation of such a list and have already found a strong ally – the European Parliament. A group of deputies even filed a lawsuit against the Council of Ministers of the EU, demanding the immediate abolition of both the list and the directive itself.
However, the leaders of the European Union countries, frightened by the ever-increasing flow of refugees arriving mainly from Africa and Asian countries, consider such measures absolutely necessary. The Spaniards are particularly ardent supporters of the new policy – as is known, a veritable river of illegal immigrants flooded into that country over the past year, so much so that the Spanish authorities even had to launch a separate satellite into space to track their vessels approaching the kingdom’s maritime borders.