Illegal Entry
June 13, 2007
European Union countries on Tuesday brushed off Maltese calls for creating a system to take in illegal immigrants picked up outside EU territory, but vowed to boost border patrols and strengthen cooperation with transit countries.
While German interior minister Wolfgang Schäuble said that the 27-member bloc was ready to "share responsibility" and "put forward proposals for burden-sharing," his EU counterparts flatly rejected the Maltese pleas.
These were for a system to be set up under which illegal migrants rescued or intercepted by EU ships outside European waters would be admitted by the bloc's countries.
Germany holds the rotating EU presidency until the end of this month.
"Most states are silent to our proposal," Maltese Interior Minister Tonio Borg said after a meeting with his EU colleagues.
Pull factor
Sweden and Italy, among others, argued that a scheme to distribute would-be immigrants according to the size of EU countries would only be a pull-factor for illegal migrants.
Schäuble said that the EU would assist Malta "first and foremost" by assisting the tiny country in search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean.
Struggling to cope with an ongoing immigrant crisis off its coast with Libya, the EU's smallest member state Malta has called repeatedly for solidarity from other EU countries.
"The first priority is to save lives, the second is to settle the situation of people saved at sea," Schäuble said.
Looking for a strategy
EU justice commissioner France Frattini said that EU experts would meet in the coming weeks to try and find ways to deal with illegal immigrants intercepted outside EU waters. He also said that the commission would work to bring Libya on board of European operations in patrolling the EU's southern borders.
Some 7 million euros in extra funds will be made available to strengthen the bloc's frontier watchdog, Frattini said, adding that a new patrol mission in the Mediterranean would start on June 25.
Thousands of poor Africans cross the Mediterranean Sea each year in a bid to enter the EU illegally via Malta, Italy and Spain. Many of the would-be migrants, using rickety boats to make the hazardous sea crossing to Europe, have drowned on the way.
The bloc has responded by stepping up border controls, with so-called "frontline" states, Spain, Italy and Malta, demanding even tougher measures against the illegals.
Since the beginning of 2007, Malta has saved 315 shipwrecked immigrants seeking to enter Europe in rickety boats. Borg said that 250 of them were taken on board Maltese ships in the past 15 days.
Human rights groups have urged the EU to take urgent measures to prevent further immigrants' deaths.
Recent EU policies were not deterring people from trying to enter Europe but "rather force the most vulnerable individuals to seek more and more dangerous and desperate methods of entry," they argued.
Different asylum policies
Swedish integration minister Tobias Billstroem told reporters that EU governments had taken "the first steps" towards building a common asylum policy.
Despite a commitment to an EU-wide common asylum system, member states not only take different approaches to Iraqi claims but also apply very different standards of treatment to asylum seekers.
Billstroem called on EU governments to offer more places for resettling refugees and said that the bloc must work with the United Nations in setting up a quota system to take in people fleeing Iraq.
Sweden, which grants refugee status or other protection to almost all Iraqi asylum seekers, hosts the largest number of Iraqi refugees in the EU. Some 9,000 Iraqis found a new home in Sweden last year. Stockholm expects some 20,000 more this year. The number of Iraqis seeking refuge in the bloc is likely to reach 40,000 this year.
Frattini has slammed member states for a lack of solidarity in hosting asylum seekers and dealing with refugee crisis and has vowed to push for new plans aimed at harmonizing asylum rules in the EU.
Currently, there are some 20 different systems of asylum in the 27-nation bloc. The commission, the EU's executive arm, wants to have more harmonized rules in place by 2010.