Immigration and asylum has been taking place in Europe for quite some time, but didn’t become a hot topic until the early 1990’s especially when we are talking about Italy, even recently immigration and asylum seekers have been arriving from North Africa in large numbers. Currently the process of applying and receiving asylum varies from country to country within Europe and there is much abuse of the system by both the country and asylum seeker from fraud to breaking international laws. In addition to this there is a general trend that has been occurring over the past 25 to 30 years and is a major problem has been the a steep and steady decrease in the people that are actually recognized as refugees which has dropped from 50% in 1982 all the way down to 28% in 2001 (Hatton 5). In an interview I had with a refugee worker at St Paul’s he said that the current system needs much work because of the difficultly obtain asylum in Italy and puts a large amounts of responsibility on the external border countries like Italy and Spain. Recently in the EU there has been a calling for change in the current system and desire between most EU Member States to move towards the direction of a common system of asylum for the continent of Europe.
The modern day asylum system has it root traced back to under the 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the status of refugees article 1 defined what a refugee is, and article 33 is the non-refoulment policy.
Article 1: defines a refugee as someone who is outside his or her country of normal residence and is unable or unwilling to return to it owing to a well-founded fear of persecution.
Article 33: Provides that a person who has claimed asylum under the Convention must not be forcibly returned to a territory where he or she may be at risk of persecution. Also known as non-refoulment.
There hasn’t been many real advancements in this policy area since the 1951 convention until recently in the last decade under the Tampere programme starting in 1999. The European Council, at its 1999 meeting in Tampere agreed to establish a Common European Asylum System based on the full and inclusive application of the 1951 Geneva Convention. The Common European Asylum System is one of the European Union’s objectives of establishing an area of freedom security and justice open to those seeking protection in the EU. The first real work to be done in this policy area was under the 2004 Hague Programme and the vision was to create a practical co-operational system between all Member States under a similar policy, creating a common framework and system for all of the EU. The Hague, Tampere and the more recent Stockholm Programmes are guidelines and goals set forth by the Council every five years, these Programmes have outlined the dates of when the Council would like to finish working on the legislation and preferably adopt the policies. Under the Hague Programme the goal was to have the commission propose the legislation to the council and parliament by 2009 or early 2010 but his didn’t happen under the Programme and has been extended under Stockholm to 2012, with a preferred adoption deadline of 2012. Under the Stockholm Programme the main goal in the immigration and asylum is to setup the Common European Asylum System by 2012 and to further the development of the European Asylum Office.
One of the more important pieces of legislation was in October 2009 with the European Pact on Immigration and Asylum. This pact was outlined into 5 basic commitments all under the premise that the EU must develop a comprehensive and flexible migration policy and that the policy should concentrate on solidarity and responsibility, and address the needs of both EU countries and migrants. These 5 commitments are:
· To organize legal migration to take account of the priorities, needs and reception capacities determined by each Member State, and to encourage integration.
· To control illegal immigration by ensuring that illegal immigrants return to their countries of origin or to a country of transit.
· To make border controls more effective
· To construct a Europe of Asylum.
· To create a comprehensive partnership with the countries of origin and of transit in order to encourage the synergy between migration and development.
These 5 commitments offer a very good foundation for the future of the Common European Asylum System and outline the goals and parameters that need to be taken in order to protect the rights of the asylum seekers and also those of the Member States.
The CEAS is to built in a 2 phase structure the first phase is comprised of 4 legal documents that act as the building blocks for the second phase, as of 2009 all 4 of these legal documents are in enacted into law across all 27 EU Member States.
Regulation (EC) 343/2003 ("Dublin Regulation")
· The Dublin Regulation contains rules about the Member State’s responsibility for evaluating an application for asylum and to prevent multiple or simultaneous applications by an individual. The general aim of this regulation was to prevent an applicant form applying in multiple Member States, and also made it so that the first country of entry the one that processes the application and is responsible for that individual, which inadvertently places more pressure on the border countries.
Directive 2003/9/EC ("Reception Conditions Directive,")
· The Reception Conditions Directive guarantees minimum standards for the treatment of asylum seekers including housing, education and health.
Directive 2004/83/EC ("Qualification Directive")
· The Qualification Directive determines the criteria for qualifying for either refugee status or subsidiary protection status, and also determines what rights are associated with each of these statuses. This directive also introduced a system for subsidiary protection in the EU to those that fall outside the guidelines of the Geneva Convention of 1951.
Directive 85/2005/EC ("Asylum Procedures Directive")
· The Asylum Procedures Directive guarantees that throughout the EU all applications at first processing will be subjected to the minimum standards set forth in the in the directive.
These legislative documents have been put in place by the EU to help level the playing field and to create a system which guarantees a person genuinely in need of protection access to a high level protection under equal conditions in all EU Member States, while at the same time dealing with those who do not qualify for asylum to be dealt with fairly and efficiently. The second phase of the CEAS was to be prepared by the commission by 2010 but this date has been pushed back to 2012 for the successful completion of the system. The goals of the second phase should be to achieve both a higher standard of protection and greater equality in security and protection across the EU and to ensure greater solidarity between EU Member States.
Establishment of the CEAS by 2012 still remains a high priority under the Stockholm programme. The CEAS framework reinforces the non-refoulment policy that was originally enforced by the Geneva Convention and will help prevent countries like Italy, Spain and Greece from sending asylum seekers back to their country of departure. This will continue to remain an important policy area as more and more people immigrate and seek refuge in Europe, and countries like Italy will have to be more open to accepting them especially with the current issues that people are facing in some of the North African countries like Lybia, Egypt and Tunisia.
Biography
Hatton, Timothy. "European Asylum Policy." Forschungsintitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit 0.1721 (2005): 1-33. Web. 01Mar 2011.
Dublin Regulation
Reception Conditions Directive
Qualification Directive
Asylum Procedures Directive
Abdulla, Akbatan. Personal Interview by Anthony Rossi. 01 Mar 2011.
LaRue, Dean. E-Mail Interview by Anthony Rossi. 13 Mar 2011.
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