Call for aid to help states admit refugees

Date: 04/06/1998

By Simon Coss

MEMBER states which agree to take in large influxes of refugees should receive financial compensation, Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Anita Gradin will suggest later this month.

Officials working for the Commissioner are currently putting the finishing touches to updated proposals for an EU 'joint action' on the temporary protection of displaced persons.

Gradin will argue that governments should come up with a workable 'burden sharing' agreement, setting out clearly how large groups of refugees entering the Union should be 'shared out' between countries.

She will also argue that EU funds should be made available to help governments which agree to welcome such refugees, although officials admit that the document currently deals only with the principle of financial compensation and mentions no concrete figures.

Comission experts are are nevertheless hailing the new plan as a significant step forward. “It marks the passage of burden sharing from a concept to a reality,” said one.

Gradin put forward a first proposal on the treatment of displaced persons last March, in response to the outpouring of refugees from former Yugoslavia. But this soon became bogged down in discussions in the Council of Ministers, with governments hopelessly divided over the burden sharing issue.

Countries with traditionally generous asylum policies, such as Germany, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Austria, complain that they have to bear the brunt of any large influxes of refugees and argue that the questions of asylum policy and burden sharing are inextricably linked. But most other member states, led by France and Spain, have resisted past attempts to deal with the two matters simultaneously.

Gradin's new plans are therefore likely to face a rough ride in the Council of Ministers. While the pro-burden sharing member states will almost certainly support her initiative, the others will not, and all proposals under the Union's intergovernmental justice and home affairs arm must be approved unanimously if they are to become law.

Indeed, Gradin's plans are likely to encounter some stormy reactions before they even leave the Commission, with insiders predicting that the 20-strong College will divide along national lines when it examines the proposal later this month.

“I think the issue will lead to some discussions,” said one official diplomatically. He added that while Sweden's Gradin, along with Austrian Commissioner Franz Fischler, Denmark's Ritt Bjerregaard and Germany's Martin Bangemann and Monika Wulf-Mathies would probably support the plan, other Commissioners were likely to be more “thoughtful”.

At present, the EU has no commonly agreed rules for dealing with the arrival of large numbers of refugees. All member states are signatories to the 1951 Geneva Convention which covers the rights of individual asylum-seekers.

But the Commission argues that a common approach is needed to cover situations where the number of refugees is so great that a case-by-case approach is not practical.