European Union nations reached an agreement on revising the bloc’s asylum rules to achieve a more equitable distribution of hosting asylum seekers and migrants, which includes penalties for countries that refuse to participate, aims to alleviate the burden on frontline countries such as Greece and Italy.
On Thursday, EU nations agreed on a long-stalled revision of the bloc’s rules to share the hosting of asylum seekers and migrants more equitably.
Sweden, which holds the bloc’s rotating presidency, announced the breakthrough after a fraught day of negotiations between EU interior ministers in Luxembourg.
The deal, which needed approval from most countries representing at least 65 percent of the bloc’s population, comes after years of wrangling over asylum policy.
The priority is for EU countries to share the hosting of asylum-seekers, taking in many that arrive in nations on the bloc’s outer rim, mainly Greece and Italy.
The agreement said nations that refuse would instead be required to pay a sum of 20,000 euros ($21,000) per person into a fund managed by Brussels.
Poland and Hungary voted against the proposals, while Bulgaria, Malta, Lithuania, and Slovakia abstained.
The preliminary agreement opens the way for negotiations with the European Parliament on legislation that could be adopted before European elections in June next year.
The difficult reform has jumped up the bloc’s agenda as the number of asylum seekers rises after a pause caused by travel curbs during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Belgian Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration Nicole de Moor said migrants who statistically had less chance of getting refugee status included citizens from “Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Senegal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.”
But Oxfam, a charity that aids refugees, has criticized the direction of the talks as EU countries take harsher steps to stem asylum seekers.
Before the final negotiations, it argued that the proposals “will not fix the chronic deficiencies in the EU asylum system.”
Miroslava Salazar with AFP
