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19th Mar 2024

'Solidarity' eludes EU interior ministers on migration

EU interior ministers on Thursday (26 January) were grappling with broader questions on solidarity when it comes to people applying for international protection.

At a meeting in Malta's capital city Valletta, the ministers were unable to decide on how asylum seekers will be distributed following a proposal to overhaul Dublin, an EU law that determines who is handling applications.

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German interior minister Thomas de Maziere told reporters that discussions are under way to possibly turn Dublin into three-tier system based on the number of arrivals.

"After the number of refugees goes beyond a certain threshold, the refugees that arrive in Europe, another system is needed, a system that eases the countries of first arrival, a system of solidarity," he said.

The idea is based on the Slovak presidency paper on "effective solidarity" floated late last year. The paper outlined three scenarios based on various intensities of inflows that determined the level of engagement of EU states.

Carmelo Abela, Malta's interior minister, speaking on behalf of the EU presidency, said details still needed to be worked out and that the idea was far from complete.

"There might be different grades and different stages of how to implement in principle this agreement. So, this is the kind of discussion we are having," he said.

EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos did not dismiss it either, but noted that "the devil is in the detail."

The EU commission's Dublin overhaul last summer included plans that would allow an EU state to offload applicants to another in case of overload. Dubbed the "fairness mechanism", it is based on a reference key that would automatically trigger an allocation without any formal decision making.

The issue riled some member states, with the EU Slovak presidency proposing various "solidarity" alternatives to allow governments more choices in how they want to ease the refugee and asylum crisis.

Last year it proposed a "flexible solidarity" approach, which then morphed into an "effective solidarity" paper circulated among ministers in November.

Malta, which now presides the six-month rotating presidency, had put the issue on its agenda at the ministerial meeting on Thursday, but an EU diplomat told reporters that the ministers were still hoping to unblock broader disputes on how the Dublin's "fairness mechanism" would work in practice.

"There is a will to find a common solution and a mechanism that this will ensure that we avoid crises in the future, that is the whole idea," noted the source.

She said ministers had also mulled other ways on how member states could alleviate pressure on the refugee crisis.

De Maziere, ahead of the meeting, appeared to back the commission's Dublin reforms.

"If few refugees are coming we could stay with the current, but reformed Dublin rules. If countries, where migrants arrive first, have a special burden, than a distribution mechanism would be applied," he told reporters.

No opt-outs on migration, says Malta

For the Mediterranean country that just took the EU presidency, the migration crisis is still there and must be addressed internally and externally.

Malta will try to 'please everyone' on migration

The forthcoming EU presidency will seek compromise on asylum policy and push forward discussions on the control of external borders, Maltese interior minister Carmelo Abela told EUobserver.

Germany seeks to harden EU border checks

German interior minister Thomas de Maiziere said internal EU border controls should be imposed on security as well as immigrations grounds, shifting their legal basis.

Analysis

Election in sight, EU mood music changes on offshoring asylum

Designating a country like Rwanda as 'safe' under EU rules to send an asylum-seeker there requires strict conditions to be met first. But a backdoor clause introduced into EU legislation allows a future commission to strip out those requirements.

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