MEPs pledge €69.6m boost for migration agencies

MEPs say that the three EU agencies managing migration flows and various EU funds dealing with migration should get a €69.6 million budget boost.  The demand came as parliament's budgets committee approved proposed changes to this year's European budget. The budget increases still need to be approved by Parliament as a whole and the Council of Ministers.

The move comes in the wake of recent tragedies where hundreds of migrants have drowned at sea trying to get to European countries.  This has sparked demands by Human Rights Watch for European Union leaders to make an “unambiguous and united” commitment to ensuring that people fleeing war and persecution will find refuge in Europe.  Heads of state from the 28 EU countries will meet in Brussels on June 25 and 26 to discuss European Commission proposals for a European Agenda on Migration.

“EU leaders should agree to concrete actions to show the world they uphold the values the European Union was founded on,” said Judith Sunderland, senior Western Europe researcher at Human Rights Watch.  “From east to west, and south to north, we need, first and foremost, to see solidarity with the women, men, and children forced to risk their lives to seek safety in Europe.”

There is broad agreement among EU member states on many of the European Commission’s proposals that focus on limiting arrivals to the EU, tackling smuggling networks, and enforcing returns to countries of origin. Yet two proposals – on refugee resettlement and a fairer distribution of responsibility for asylum seekers already in the EU – have generated controversy in some European capitals, Human Rights Watch said.

Leaked draft conclusions for the summit suggest that EU leaders will commit to the principle that all member states will participate in a programme, proposed by the commission, to resettle 20,000 recognized refugees over the next two years.  HRW says this low number contrasts starkly with global needs at a time of protracted refugee emergencies.  The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, estimates that in 2015, globally almost one million refugees need to be resettled and one in every 122 people on the planet is displaced. UNHCR has asked the international community to resettle at least 130,000 Syrian refugees out of nearly 4 million currently hosted in the Middle East.

But so far individual EU countries have pledged to take only a total of 45,000, and fewer than 9,000 have actually been brought to EU territory.  EU leaders are also expected to delay concrete decisions about how and when to relocate asylum seekers from Italy and Greece, two countries facing high numbers of arrivals by sea.  The European Commission has proposed a relocation scheme to distribute 40,000 Syrians and Eritreans – 24,000 from Italy and 16,000 from Greece – over the next two years.

The draft conclusions indicate that member states will agree by the end of July on how many asylum seekers each member state should take.  The relocation scheme is a modest step needed to correct unequitable distribution of responsibility for asylum seekers, and it is vital for member states to respond generously and promptly, Human Rights Watch said.  Meanwhile, the budgets committee also said that Italy, Romania and Bulgaria should get €66.5m€ in EU aid to help repair the damage done by severe floods in 2014.

The European Solidarity Fund aid will help the three countries to repair damage done to public and private infrastructure, private homes, businesses, agriculture, the environment, and cultural heritage, by the spring and summer floods (Romania), summer floods (Bulgaria) and autumn floods (Italy).  Italy, where besides the material loses there were 11 casualties, will receive €56m, Romania €8.49m and Bulgaria €1.98m. The total direct damage cost an estimated €2.241 billion in Italy, €339.8m in Romania and €79.3m in Bulgaria.  The European Solidarity Fund was set up in November 2002 to help victims of natural disasters in regions in need of financial support. This is the first mobilization decision of 2015. The Fund has a ceiling of €541.2m for this year, to which an additional amount of €403.9m unspent in 2014 may be added.

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