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The European Union Policy towards a Common European Asylum SystemAsylum is a form of protection given by a State on its territory based on the principle of non-refoulement and internationally or nationally recognised refugee rights. It is granted to a person who is unable to seek protection in his/her country of citizenship and/or residence in particular for fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. The European Union (EU) is an area in which freedom of movement must be ensured. Since the beginning of 1990s, the flow of persons seeking international protection in the EU has been such that the Member States have decided to find common solutions to this challenge. A set of commonly agreed principles at European Community level in the field of asylum can provide a clear added value while continuing to safeguard Europe's humanist tradition. The Hague Programme adopted in November 2004 enhances these objectives through the setting up of the second phase instruments of the Common European Asylum System with a view to adoption by 2010.
I) Latest developments (under The Hague Programme – 5 November 2004)
The Hague Programme was adopted by Heads of State or Government on 5 November 2004. It takes up the challenge for taking forward the Common European Asylum System and looks to the establishment of the common asylum procedure and uniform status for those granted asylum or subsidiary protection, based on a thorough and complete evaluation of the legal instruments adopted in the first phase. The Commission is invited to adopt second phase instruments of the Common European Asylum System with a view to adoption by 2010. The Hague Programme also recognizes that practical cooperation between Member States will play an important part in fostering the necessary spirit of solidarity and responsibility sharing to achieve these goals. In this context, the Commission is working on defining the appropriate structures to assist Member States achieve a Single Procedure, to standardize Country of Origin Information and to help address particular pressures arising from factors such as geographical location. These structures should lead to a European Support Office to oversee all forms of cooperation between Member States on the Common European Asylum System. The main goal of reinforced practical co-operation will be to improve the quality of individual decisions by Members Sates within the framework of the rules set by the Community asylum legislation. Improving quality is in the interest of both the Members States and asylum-seekers. Better quality decision-making, particularly at first instance, could reduce the proportion of challenges to negative decisions, with resultant cost and time savings. Greater consistency in practice of Member States as regards decisions on particular groups could help address one cause of secondary movement within the EU, avoiding multiple demands. An important area related to practical co-operation is the exchange of information on migration and asylum issues. The Hague Programme calls for an improvement of such exchanges. Therefore, the Commission has presented in autumn 2005 proposals for a regulation on Community statistics on migration and international protection, with the objective of improving our statistical knowledge of these issues. It has also proposed to enhance mutual information of national immigration and asylum policies between Member States’ policy-makers with the creation of a mutual information procedure on planned national asylum and immigration measures. The Hague Programme has also given new emphasis to the external dimension of asylum and migration. It is a fact that the vast majority of refugees remain in their regions of origin in circumstances of extreme poverty and questionable safety and in the meantime the EU spends millions of Euros on processing asylum applications the most part of which do not qualify for any form of international protection. The EU cannot ignore the wider picture of global protection needs – it is evident that asylum is a challenge that can only be tackled effectively if the EU tries to ensure that those who need protection are able to access it as quickly as possible and as closely as possible to their needs. There is therefore a clear need for better targeting and coordination of EU policies in partnership with third countries to deal more effectively with root causes and to provide for durable solutions to resolve refugee situations, particularly those refugee situations which have been continuing for some years. In this context, the Council has invited the Commission to develop Regional Protection Programmes (RPP) in close cooperation with UNHCR. Such programmes would comprise agendas of actions to enhance protection capacity in countries in regions of origin and a resettlement programme. A Communication on Regional Protection Programmes was issued in September 2005. The content of the first RPP should deliver direct benefits to refugees as well as contribute to improvement of the protection and human rights situation in the host country. A programme of 5 or 6 actions could therefore be envisaged which includes registration and other projects which are focused on the delivery of practical benefits (training, infra-structure building, the provision of equipment etc). A joint resettlement programme, to be implemented on a voluntary basis, will be an important factor in every RPP in terms of delivering a Durable Solutions outcome to refugees and demonstrating the partnership element of RPPs to the third countries involved. Finally, the financial aspects of cooperating with third countries have not been forgotten: A new financial instrument, the Aeneas programme, has been set in order to finance migration- and asylum-related actions in third countries. 250 € million are foreseen for the period 2004-2008.  II) General contextTampere and the Geneva Convention The major aims and principles of the common asylum policy were agreed in October 1999 at the European Council in Tampere (Finland) by the Heads of State or Government. They decided that a common asylum policy should be implemented and a common European asylum system be established. A first set of standards and measures had to be adopted by May 2004. In so doing, a scoreboard was drawn up to clearly spell out the respective responsibilities of Member States, the EU Council of Ministers and the Commission to achieve that goal. Most of the elements of the first legislative phase are already in place. In the longer term, the rules should lead to a common asylum procedure and a uniform status for those granted asylum valid throughout the Union. This has been confirmed by The Hague programme (adopted in November 2004 by the Heads of State or Government), which builds on the achievements of the Tampere programme and which sets the agenda for the next five years. The centrality of the Geneva Convention to addressing European, and global, refugee issues for over 50 years now, its purpose of defining who is a refugee, its laying down of a common approach to be taken towards refugees has been the essential foundation of the embryonic Common European Asylum System. Respect of the Convention has been a constant theme in the preparation, presentation and negotiation of the four main instruments on asylum and its relevance will of course prove similarly essential to the development of future policy. That asylum is a European internal problem which has to be tackled on a European level is another concern – in a Europe without borders it made sense to aim for an approximation of conditions for asylum seekers, so that one country would not seem more attractive a destination than another, thereby encouraging unwarranted secondary movement and to ensure that wherever an asylum applicant made his or her application in Europe, there was a certainty that he or she would be able to access support, have a fair hearing and not be disadvantaged by a more or less generous interpretation of who was a refugee than if he or she had found themselves in another European country. What has been achieved? The four main legal instruments on asylum – the Reception Conditions Directive, the Asylum Procedures Directive, the Qualification Directive and the Dublin Regulation all aimed at this general objective: to level the asylum playing field and lay the foundations for a Common European Asylum System, on which could be built further structures to safeguard the EU as a single asylum space and ensure that our citizens could have confidence in a system that gave protection to those who required it and dealt fairly and efficiently with those without protection requirements. The Dublin Regulation contains clear rules about the Member State responsible for assessing an application for asylum. It is an important instrument for the prevention of multiple demands. The Reception Conditions Directive guarantees minimum standards for the reception of asylum-seekers, including housing, education and health. The Qualification Directive contains a clear set of criteria for qualifying either for refugee or subsidiary protection status and sets out what rights are attached to each status. Significantly, the Directive also introduces a harmonised regime for subsidiary protection in the EU for those persons who fall outside the scope of the Geneva Convention but who nevertheless still need international protection, such as victim of generalised violence or civil war. This is of increasing importance as the number of persons in need of this type of protection is growing both in Member States and on a worldwide scale. The adoption of the Asylum Procedures Directive (expected to be adopted late 2005/early 2006) will ensure that throughout the EU, all procedures at first instance are subject to the same minimum standards. Both accelerated and regular procedures provide the same safeguards for applicants – for example, the right to be invited to a personal interview – as well as the basic principles and guarantees relating to interpretation and access to legal aid. The Directive also introduces the obligation for all Member States to ensure an ‘effective remedy before a court or tribunal’ and such judicial scrutiny goes well beyond the above mentioned standards. In addition to the legislative work, solidarity has been enhanced through the creation of the European Refugee Fund (ERF). The ERF fosters solidarity between Member States and promotes balance in the efforts they make in receiving asylum seekers, refugees and displaced persons. The ERF also supports Member States action to promote the social and economic integration of refugees and their return to their countries of origin, if they so wish. The existing measures which are now being transposed into national law, implemented or evaluated. As Guardian of the Treaty it will be the Commission’s first task to ensure that transposition of the Directives takes place accurately and in time and to monitor and report on what has been done. This monitoring should help facilitate a convergence in interpretation between Member States and arrive at levels of harmonisation beyond what is stipulated in the Directives. The European Court of Justice will also have a key role to play and its rulings on interpretation of the framework legislation will also contribute to uniform interpretations of the agreed texts. Programmes
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