EU tries to unblock refugee relocation deal

EU tries to unblock refugee relocation deal

By JACOPO BARIGAZZI 9/21/15, 7:19 PM CET Updated 9/21/15, 10:56 PM CET

http://www.politico.eu/article/eu-tries-to-unblock-refugee-migrants-relocation-deal-crisis/

EU countries are preparing to green-light a controversial European Commission proposal to relocate 120,000 refugees across the continent, but diplomatic sources said the deal will not impose mandatory criteria for how many asylum-seekers each member state must accept.

Interior ministers from the EU’s 28 countries are preparing to hold an emergency meeting in Brussels Tuesday to approve the proposal, which was left on the table after they failed to agree on it a week ago. Diplomats spent most of the day Monday trying to break the impasse between countries over whether the plan would set mandatory quotas for accepting refugees.

Several eastern European countries remain opposed to any plan that includes a requirement from Brussels to take in asylum-seekers. According to one diplomat, the specific criteria for relocation have been taken out of the agreement because many countries “are afraid they could be the basis for a permanent relocation scheme.”

“Romania, the Czechs and the Slovak are still the main opponents” — EU diplomat

The pressure to move on the refugee issue will build throughout the week. On Wednesday, EU leaders will gather for an emergency summit on the migration issue, and officials are hoping to have the relocation dispute settled before then.

According to official sources, the agreement now being considered would relocate the 120,000 refugees from Greece and Italy, but not from Hungary as originally proposed by Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in his State of the Union speech earlier this month.

“We are reaching a deal, but Romania, the Czechs and the Slovak are still the main opponents,” said one EU diplomat.

Leaders of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, the so-called Visegrad group, met on Monday afternoon in Prague to discuss “possible solutions” to the refugee crisis. According to a press release issued by the Czech foreign ministry, the four countries were expected to reiterate their opposition to compulsory quotas.

Front-line states

Luxembourg, which holds the rotating presidency of the Council, was still trying to find a consensus on the proposal rather than call for a majority vote to push through the mandatory quotas. After last week’s meeting, Luxembourg’s Jean Asselborn, who is minister for immigration and asylum as well as being foreign minister, told reporters that such a majority existed, but diplomats said using it to impose the plan on unwilling countries would be politically unwise.

The scope of the problem was underlined this week when the EU released new figures showing that more than 210,000 asylum-seekers applied for protection in the Union in the second quarter of 2015. Those numbers do not take into account the thousands of refugees now arriving daily at Europe’s borders.

Both of the Commission proposals now likely to be left out of the new agreement — the inclusion of Hungary in the relocation plan and the criteria for distributing refugees across member states — have faced fierce resistance in recent weeks.

After changing its line several times, Hungary is now refusing to be considered as front-line state for the arrival of refugees, along with Italy and Greece, and in draft conclusions being worked on Monday by the Council it had been removed from the plan.

The original Commission proposal was to relocate 54,000 migrants from Hungary, 50,400 from Greece and 15,600 from Italy. Diplomats now face two options for the 54,000 that would have come from Hungary: Either redistribute them between Italy and Greece, or keep them as a “reserve” for further emergency situations. The latter option “is the most likely,” to be agreed says an EU official involved in the discussions.

Diplomats have also discussed relocating some or all of that “reserve” from transit states, such as Croatia, or destination states, such as Germany.

“Voluntary”

An earlier agreement on the Commission’s proposal from May to relocate 40,000 refugees required a delicate compromise making the target figure mandatory but the method for reaching it voluntary. That less-ambitious agreement was finalized last week by ministers, but the headline goal has still not been reached.

EU officials are trying to avoid a similar problem on this larger plan. To sidestep the mandatory versus voluntary problem, this time the number of refugees each country will take in will not be imposed by the Commission but rather agreed by the various member states.

“It would not possible for a member state to completely opt out of taking refugees”

“Numbers have been roughly agreed with each member state, so [sovereignty] is safe,” the EU diplomat said.

“The fact that in many cases the number of refugees to take in is very similar to the numbers proposed by the Commission is a pure coincidence,” noted another EU diplomat.

Also still on the table: the “exceptional circumstances” under which a member state can argue that it will not take part in the relocation scheme. Ministers were still debating two different options Monday afternoon: a member state could opt out of the plan by making a “contribution” to a special EU fund of €6,500 for each refugee that is not taken in; or a country could ask for a delay of up to six months for the relocation plan to be fully implemented.

But it is not a real opt-out. In drafts being circulated Monday and obtained by POLITICO, the delay option would involve only “30 percent of applicants allocated,” meaning it would not possible for a member state to completely opt out of taking refugees. France, Germany and Italy are reluctant to impose a monetary compensation plan, because they would like to avoid the idea of paying a fee to avoid European solidarity, an EU official said.

Many of the larger questions will have to be dealt with over dinner Wednesday by EU heads of state and government. The leaders will hold an “informal” summit to discuss how to tackle migration at its roots, in Turkey and Syria, and how to ensure control of the EU external borders.

How that conversation goes could depend on what gets decided the day before.

Maïa de la Baume contributed to this article.