EU Reaches Agreement on Reforming Bloc’s Migration Laws

Syllabus:  GS-III, International Relations;

Subject: International Relations;

Topic: Effect of policies and politics of developed and developing countries on India’s interests, Indian diaspora, Humanitarian crisis.

Issue: EU deal to reforms in migration laws;

Context: EU countries and lawmakers reached an agreement on an overhaul of the bloc’s laws on handling asylum-seekers and migrants, officials said.

Synopsis:

• The accord still needs to be formally approved by the European Council, representing the 27 EU member countries, and the European Parliament before it becomes a law.

Key Highlights of the proposed reforms:

• Compulsory solidarity mechanism: would be set up to help countries experiencing a high number of arrivals — as is the case with Mediterranean countries Italy, Greece and Malta.
  • To take pressure off southern countries experiencing big inflows.
  • That would mean a certain number of migrant relocations to other EU countries, or countries that refuse to take in migrants would provide a financial or material contribution to those that do.
• Accelerated vetting: aims for an accelerated filtering and vetting of asylum-seekers so those deemed ineligible can be quickly sent back to their home country or country of transition.
• Border detention centres: set up would apply to irregular migrants coming from countries whose nationals’ asylum requests are rejected in more than 80 percent of cases
• Surge response: under which protections for asylum-seekers could be curtailed in times of significant inflows, as happened in 2015-2016 when more than two million asylum-seekers arrived in the EU, many from war-torn Syria.

Source: The Hindu