Legal News

Discussions about the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean are due to continue at an EU summit this week, after EU ministers failed to reach agreement on a policy to tackle the crisis last week.

BBC News reports that after discussions last week, Latvian Interior Minister Rihards Kozlovskis said there was “no common view” between EU member states on how to distribute 60,000 migrants across the 28 EU member states.

European Commissioner for Migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, has said that only a compulsory mechanism rather than a voluntary scheme will redistribute 40,000 migrants among EU member states.

David Cameron has already said that the UK will not accept migrants – the UK is exempt from any scheme involving compulsory distribution of migrants across Europe because it is not a member of the Schengen agreement, which allows free movement across borders without a visa in EU states belonging to the Schengen area.

Around 20,000 migrants – many of whom are fleeing civil war in Syria – would be moved from UN refugee camps to Europe under a voluntary scheme if they have genuine claims for asylum.

The EU Commission has said that the emergency resettlement scheme would apply to migrants “in clear need of international protection”, rather than economic migrants.

The commission has already said that Syrian and Eritrean nationals would qualify for emergency resettlement.
Following talks in Luxembourg last week, Mr Avramopoulos said:

“Solidarity does not come in pieces. We made progress today, but we are not there yet.

“It's time we looked beyond national interests and avoided the lowest common denominator, the bargaining and finger-pointing.”

Britain has been criticised over its refusal to take more refugees while Italy, Malta and Greece continue to be overwhelmed by the scale of migration across the Mediterranean Sea from Africa and the Middle East.

Mr Avramopoulos added that the EU had “tried a voluntary approach in the past and it didn't work”.

The BBC reports that this year Germany is anticipating processing around 400,000 new asylum claims.

Many new migrants hope to settle in northern European countries like Germany, France and the UK.

The town of Passau on the German-Austria border has become a target for human traffickers, who leave migrants on the highway to walk along a stretch of motorway into the nearest town. Many of the migrants entering the EU via Passau are children travelling alone.

Both Germany and Austria have backed the idea of a quote system to distribute migrants across the EU. However, the UK, Denmark and Ireland all have exemptions from the quota plan.

Duncan Lewis Immigration Solicitors

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