The European Commission has proposed on Wednesday a common list of “Safe Countries” with which it hopes to speed up – and potentially deny more quickly – the border procedures for asylum demand for the applicants of those nations. The initiative is part of the hardening of migratory processes in the EU and in the acceleration of migrants who are not entitled to refugee status. The procedures of citizens from the proposed list, including Tunisia, Morocco or Colombia, should have a maximum duration of three months, according to the initiative.
This proposal, which must still receive the approval of the Member States and the Eurocamara, occurs at a time when both the irregular entries of migrants and the asylum demands are reduced, according to official European data. Despite this, Brussels also what will develop the proposal to create deportation centers in extra -community countries and expand the list of states to which migrants can be deported.
Both the elaboration of a list of “countries of safe origin” and that of reviewing the concept of “third safe country”, which will be presented before the summer, respond to the demands of making even more strict the European immigration policy of countries such as Austria or Italy. In fact, the list of “countries of safe origin” presented this Wednesday gives a: the justice of the country rejected the first attempts of the head of ultra government to process in a center in Albania to irregular migrants from Bangladés and Egypt, considering that these were not safe countries, which, of advancing the proposal of Brussels, will change.
These two countries appear on the new list proposed by Brussels, which also includes Colombia, Kosovo, India, Morocco and Tunisia. The European Executive has indicated that it is also “considering” to include in the list the candidate countries to the EU except in “specific circumstances”: an “indiscriminate violence in conflict situations”, as would be the case of Ukraine; that there are sanctions adopted by the Council against that country or a recognition rate of asylum applicants at the EU scale greater than 20%.
The list of countries of safe origin, if validated, would be mandatory in all EU countries, regardless of whether they have their own list. The Commission ensures that this new proposal will not affect the standards of human and fundamental rights that the EU applies and emphasizes that the list is dynamic: just as it does not exclude expanding it over time, it can also get a country out of it if the situation in this deteriorates.
“The designation as a country of safe origin does not establish a security guarantee for all citizens of that country,” said a community spokesman. Even with the new list, Member States must continue to carry out “individual evaluations of each asylum application in each individual case with the entire safeguard procedure,” he said. What the proposal seeks to reduce from six to three months the duration of the examination of these applications, under the premise that the citizens of those countries have less reasons to request asylum, unless they present forceful arguments that a refuge for vulnerability refuge.
The new list – in 2020 the commission withdrew a first list, after not achieving the agreement of the parties, although it had been launched in full refugee crisis, in 2015 – it is known at a time when both illegal entries to European territory and asylum demands are experiencing a decrease.
According to the latest Frontex data, the figure of irregular tickets in the EU fell 31% in the first quarter of the year, to almost 33,600. The decline was recorded, according to the European Border Agency, in “all the main migratory routes” to the EU. According to Eurostat, in January of this year, 66,800 people requested asyl of the Afghan.
