Matthew Vella
The European Parliament has called upon the European Commission to devise new ways of helping smaller states like Malta with the challenge of irregular migration, by voting for new reforms to the Dublin system.
MEPs approved the report by Green MEP Jean Lambert by 603 votes in favour, 53 against and 30 abstentions, which calls on the Commission to consider providing mechanisms “to correct the adverse effects of its implementation for the smaller Member States at the Union’s external borders”.
The report categorically stated that in the absence of a genuine common European asylum system and a single procedure, “the Dublin system will continue to be unfair both to asylum seekers and to certain Member States.”
Lambert said: “Member States that find themselves as primary points of entry to the EU for asylum seekers, such as Malta, must not shoulder an unfair burden. We therefore ask the Commission to bring forward proposals that provide a solution for the Member States and the individuals concerned.”
The report also calls upon the Commission to establish “meaningful bilateral working relations” with Libya, in order to facilitate cooperation and ensure that it meets international legal obligations.
The Dublin system establishes the criteria and mechanisms for determining the Member State responsible for examining an asylum application, together with its implementing regulation and the Eurodac fingerprints database.
The system ensures that there is always one Member State – and one only – responsible for considering any given claim for asylum. It is particularly designed to stop asylum shopping – the practice of failed asylum seekers seeking refugee status in more than one EU member state – and to establish who takes back asylum seekers.
Despite the application of the Dublin system, the percentage of multiple applications increased from 7% in 2003 to 16% in 2005, which has led the European Commission to conclude that the Dublin system has not had the expected deterrent effect.
Green MEP Jean Lambert, who conducted the evaluation of the system and proposed amendments to it, said disparities still existed in the statistical data provided by the Member States: for example, certain Member States count an entire family as a single case, whereas others count each individual member of the family.
Lambert also found that the ‘surprisingly low’ number of illegal entrants registered in the Eurodac database was due to the fact that the obligation to fingerprint all illegal entrants at the EU’s external borders was not complied with by all the Member States.
Lambert said the European Commission’s view that the Dublin system had created a “balanced” situation at the EU’s external borders, was based “on somewhat shaky foundations”.
“To summarise, it would appear that the optimistic conclusion drawn by the Commission from its evaluation (namely, that ‘the objectives of the Dublin system ... have, to a large extent, been achieved’) is based more on a favourable bias towards the system (which one may or may not share) than on a rigorous analysis (which would in any case be difficult to carry out on account of the gaps and the disparities in the data available),” Lambert said.
Arnold Cassola, Alternattiva Demokratika chairperson, expressed his party’s satisfaction at the vote. “It’s been a pleasure for AD to work together with Ms Lambert as she was preparing this report. Jean Lambert has come to Malta various times to see for herself the problems that the Maltese population is facing in dealing with the migration issue. We would like to thank her for having highlighted in the report AD and Malta’s major preoccupation on this delicate issue, that is the concept of responsibility sharing by all 27 countries of the EU and a revision of the Dublin Convention to ensure that Malta does not continue carrying the disproportionate weight it is carrying at the moment in the examination of applications of asylum seekers.”
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