As of 2016, also as a result of the migration crisis of 2015, the need to reform the Common European Asylum System has become increasingly evident in order to create a framework of standards common to all Member States, based on solidarity and fair sharing of responsibilities, and thus eliminate profiles of inhomogeneity between national asylum systems; to make the system more efficient and more resilient to migratory pressure; to discourage secondary movements; and to provide support to the Member States most affected by migration.
For this reason, from May to July 2016, the European Commission adopted two sets of reform proposals, following which, as foreseen by the EU Treaties, discussions began within the European Parliament and the Council of the Union, which were necessary to then initiate the negotiations to formally adopt a shared text. However, the Council and Parliament did not reach agreement on the Commission's proposals, and even for some of them they did not even reach the negotiation stage. Taking note of the deadlock in the legislative procedure, the Commission, in September 2020, presented a new package of proposals: the new Pact on Migration and Asylum, with the aim of rebalancing the division of responsibilities between member states through a solidarity mechanism.
The reform path has therefore been long and often complex, but today the two co-legislators seem to have reached the final stage of the legislative process to determine the final version of the legal instrument to be adopted. The European Parliament has, in fact, agreed its position on the essential elements of the reform and the Council has also adopted a general approach on the matter.
However, despite the fact that the need to reform the European asylum system is urgent and universally recognised, the proposed reform risks further reducing the standards of protection in Europe and seriously undermining the rights of refugees.
Among others, the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE), a network of 117 NGOs from 40 European countries, with the aim of protecting and promoting the rights of refugees, asylum seekers and other displaced persons in Europe, highlighted the many problems with the amendments proposed by the co-legislators in a document published on 31 August, in which it makes a comparative analysis of the orientations of the two co-legislators and recommends the preferable approach from the point of view of respect for human rights. The document shows that, even now, significant differences remain between the position of the Parliament and that of the Council: in general, the Parliament maintains the high standards of protection, while the Council's proposals tend to lower them considerably. It is possible, however, that in the final negotiations Parliament may give way on some proposals, with negative consequences for the European protection system and respect for the rights of applicants. In particular, the main concerns relate to the planned more extensive and, in some cases, mandatory use of special procedures, such as the procedure for examining the asylum application at the border or the accelerated procedure or the inadmissibility procedure, which do not allow for a rigorous examination of the application for international protection and consequently entail a greater risk of rejection. In the case of the border procedure, then, the risk is also that of subjecting applicants to conditions similar to detention at external borders. Another provision that risks considerably undermining the rights of applicants is the one proposed by the Council, according to which the right to free legal assistance in the administrative part of the procedure is no longer foreseen, but it is left to the discretion of individual Member States to provide it also in this phase: given the complexity of the asylum system, this could de facto deprive applicants of effective access to justice.
In practical terms, however, the entire reform aims to reduce access to asylum in Europe.Ultimately, therefore, the hope for a reform aimed at improving the European asylum system remains largely unfulfilled. Not only does the reform seem to go in the opposite direction with respect to achieving the supposedly primary objective of protecting the fundamental rights of applicants for international protection arriving in Europe, but it also does not seem to resolve the system's main dysfunctions, since it envisages a series of extremely complex and difficult-to-implement procedural rules and essentially keeps the Dublin system unchanged, thus maintaining the imbalance in the system for distributing asylum applications.
The current hope is, therefore, that in drafting the final text, the co-legislators will be able to listen to recommendations from many quarters, in particular those of ECRE, so as to ensure high standards of protection and to keep respect for human rights central to the reform.
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Sources used for this article:
https://ecre.org/ecre-policy-paper-reforming-eu-asylum-law-the-final-stage/
https://ecre.org/editorial-mig...
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L'Autore
Mariasole Caira
Mariasole Caira ha conseguito la laurea magistrale in Giurisprudenza presso la Pontificia Università Lateranense, a Roma, con una tesi in diritto internazionale dal titolo “Cambiamento climatico e flussi migratori: verso una tutela giuridica per i rifugiati ambientali”.
Durante il suo percorso di studi ha frequentato per un semestre l’Université Catholique de Louvain, dove ha avuto modo di approfondire il diritto internazionale.
È da sempre appassionata al tema dei diritti fondamentali, per questo oggi frequenta un Master di II livello presso l’Università La Sapienza sulla tutela internazionale dei diritti umani.
In Mondo Internazionale Post è autrice per l’area tematica di Diritti Umani.
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Immigration Asylumseekers reform