Steve Peers
During his marathon three-hour hearing today in the European
Parliament, the designated Commissioner for migration and home affairs,
Dimitris Avramopolous, repeatedly stated his adherence to liberal principles.
He strongly supported the continuation of the Schengen system, a liberal
approach to asylum and legal migration, and freedom of movement for EU
citizens. What was lacking was further detail on how his principles would be
put into practice, and how the different aspects of EU policy in this area fit
together.
Let’s take legal migration first. The would-be Commissioner supported
not only a revision of the existing Blue Card rules on highly-skilled
migration, but also a more comprehensive overhaul of EU rules on legal
migration. Indeed, he explicitly supported an EU system for legal migration
resembling the liberal regimes of Canada and Australia.
Yet he did not give a timetable for suggesting reforms in
this area, even though the Commission has recently produced a report on the
problems with the implementation of the Blue Card system, and the potential
reforms of this system can easily be identified. (For an example of what an EU immigration
code might look like, see my Statewatch analysis on this issue).
He stated repeatedly that he believed that more liberal
rules on legal migration would help to solve the problem of migrants’ loss of
life en route to the EU, and reduce irregular migration more generally. But it’s
hard to believe that Member States would give legal status to all of these
would-be migrants. It should be recalled that, in accordance with Article 79(5)
TFEU, Member States in any event retain competence to decide on the numbers of
economic migrants coming from third
countries.
As for asylum law, he appeared to believe that the
implementation of the second phase of the Common European Asylum System (in July
2015), as well as EU legislation on legal migration, would be sufficient to
secure mutual recognition for refugee decisions in the EU. But the existing EU rules only allow refugees
and persons with subsidiary protection to move between Member States once they
have qualified as long-term residents. To do this, they have to reside legally
in a Member State for at least five years, and meet other conditions as well.
If they do then move between Member States, their protection status does not in
fact travel with them (except if they are moving between the small number of
States which have ratified a Council of Europe Convention on this issue).
These limited possibilities for persons with international
protection to move between Member States do not come anywhere near to
satisfying the principles of ‘solidarity, solidarity and solidarity’ which he
referred to as regards EU asylum law. Further solidarity could only be assured
by redistributing more persons with international protection, as well as
asylum-seekers, between Member States. On the latter point, he did at least
promise to review the EU’s problematic Dublin system on the responsibility for
asylum-seekers. However, as with the last review, it will surely prove
difficult to convince richer Member States to change the responsibility rules.
Mr. Avramopolous opposed the notion of a ‘Fortress Europe’,
objecting to ‘push-backs’ at the external borders and distancing himself from a
fence built at the Greek/Turkish border by a government which he was a minister
in. Although he supported a review of the mandate of Frontex, the EU’s border
agency, apparently to include search and rescue issues, he did not suggest any
concrete measures to supervise Member States’ operational activities at the
external borders in the absence of Frontex coordination.
He did support the idea of humanitarian visas to ensure that
protection-seekers could enter the EU without having to undertake unsafe
journeys. But his specific proposal to this end was rather utopian. His idea to
appoint staff in EU delegations in third countries to consider asylum applications
is attractive in principle, but would be difficult to implement in practice. In
order to put the plan into effect, it would be necessary both to reconceive the
nature of the EU’s external delegations, and to give EU bodies, rather than the
Member States alone, a role in taking decisions concerning visas and asylum in individual
cases.
The easier course, which could be implemented immediately
without such additional legal and political complications, would be to provide
explicitly in EU legislation for an obligation for Member States to issue
humanitarian visas to asylum-seekers in their external consulates. Arguably,
the EU’s current visa code already implicitly contains such an obligation. The negotiations
on the current proposal to revise the visa code offer an opportunity to set out
this rule explicitly in EU law.
Overall, then, the would-be Commissioner cannot be faulted
on his commitment to the basic principles which would underlie a liberal immigration
policy for the EU. But his understanding of the practical details and the
overall coherence of the policy is clearly a work in progress.
Barnard & Peers: chapter 25, chapter 26
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