For the time being, Italy does not want to take back asylum seekers who have traveled to another European Member State, but for whom it remains responsible. This is announced by Belgian Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration Nicole de Moor (CD&V), who received a letter from Rome on Tuesday, just like Italy’s other European partners. ‘Suspending the Dublin rules puts pressure on the entire system,’ says De Moor. What Italy is doing is totally unacceptable. Belgium is condemned for a lack of reception, while Italy simply suspends the application of EU law.’
There has been talk for years about a reform of the European asylum and migration rules, but the Dublin Regulation remains the final piece for the time being. It lays down the criteria that determine which Member State is responsible for examining an application for international protection. If the asylum seeker in question has no family in Europe and does not have a valid visa, the application must be processed by the country where he entered the EU or where he first applied for asylum. Italy has now announced that it no longer wants to apply those Dublin rules, officially because it is facing a shortage of reception places.
State Secretary De Moor understands that Italy is located on the European external border, but asks for solidarity with all member states. ‘Belgium is under higher asylum pressure than Italy. I work on the basis of numbers and not on the basis of who shouts the loudest.’ According to De Moor, 2,424 people who arrived in Belgium this year had a ‘hit’ from Italy. “That means that they are the largest country that should take back these asylum seekers and therefore carry out those Dublin transfers.”
Moreover, Belgium has the sixth highest asylum pressure in the European Union and Italy is in sixteenth place. The whole system is currently under pressure. Asylum seekers who travel on end up in only a handful of Member States, which can no longer hand them over to the competent Member State, says De Moor. This requires the cooperation and the correct reception facilities of the responsible member state, and that is often where the shoe pinches, she says.
On her initiative, nine European countries will meet for consultations on Wednesday, the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, will also be present. De Moor hopes to come up with a number of concrete proposals with those ‘like-minded’ countries – the EU president of the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and Denmark – to get out of the current ‘malaise’.
The consultation follows previous meetings of the ‘Visegrad’ countries (Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia) and the ‘Med 5’ (Italy, Spain, Greece, Cyprus and Malta). Only 24 percent of all approved Dublin files across the EU were executed in the first nine months of 2021. In the same period this year, that percentage dropped to 17 percent. De Moor wants to make a thorough analysis of this with the Commission and the other countries that are expected in Wetstraat on Wednesday evening. On Thursday, all 27 member states will meet for formal consultations.
