Refugee groups hail planned new fund for asylum seekers

Date: 18/11/1999

By Simon Coss

REFUGEE support groups have welcomed European Commission plans to set up a permanent fund to help people seeking political asylum in the Union.

The proposal to create a 'European Refugee Fund' is set to be unveiled next week by Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner António Vitorino, who is likely to call for a total of €26 million to be set aside for initiatives to assist refugees next year.

The new fund would be targeted on three specific areas: setting up reception facilities for asylum seekers newly arrived in the Union; initiatives designed to help those whose claims for asylum have been accepted to integrate into local communities; and measures to help 'voluntary returnees' - those whose applications for asylum have been refused and who have agreed to return home.

If, as seems likely, EU governments and the European Parliament endorse Vitorino's plan, the new fund will give a significant boost to organisations which deal with refugees and asylum seekers on the ground.

"This is a considerable amount of money and we feel that this is a generally positive development," said Areti Sianni of the London-based European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE).

Under the current rules, EU governments must reach a fresh agreement every year before money from Union coffers can be released for the types of refugee initiatives targeted by the planned new fund. This means that organisations dealing with asylum seekers often do not know until the last minute whether they will have the funds to continue working in the coming year.

Vitorino will argue that the Euro-pean Refugee Fund should become a permanent part of the EU's annual budget. This means that Union governments and the Parliament would still need to decide how much money to allocate to the initiative every year as part of the annual budgeting process, but they would not have to effectively set up a new fund every 12 months.

"This set-up would allow non-governmental organisations to make much longer-term planning decisions," said one expert in the Commission's justice and home affairs department.

But while the ECRE is broadly supportive of the plan, which will be discussed by the full Commission next Wednesday (24 November), the organisation is calling for clearer rules to govern how the money should be spent.

It argues that funding in three priority areas should be clearly 'ring fenced' to prevent EU governments from spending a disproportionate share of the money on politically popular issues such as voluntary returns while neglecting the integration of refugees.

Refugee support groups have welcomed European Commission plans to set up a permanent fund to help people seeking political asylum in the Union.