EU torn over sending home war refugees

Date: 16/01/1997

By Elizabeth Wise

Pressure is growing inside the European Union to start sending Bosnian refugees home.

With the bills for accommodating hundreds of thousands of refugees adding up, some EU member states are preparing to tear off the blankets as early as this spring.

Union diplomats say they are “discussing the matter” now and, while EU member states have avoided saying that they will force the refugees to go, a source at the UN High Commission for Refugees said there were plans to send the first group home in the next three months.

Union host country fatigue is understandable, but it is creating a philosophical polemic within the EU between those anxious to shed their burden and those who insist on the humanitarian principle that refugees should not be forced back into intol-erable conditions.

It is also sparking fears among EU member states who are not housing refugees that the problem will spread to them.

According to the European Commission, 630,000 Bosnian refugees are registered inside the Union. Half of the them are in Germany, putting enormous financial strain on Bonn (8 billion ecu per year, according to the government), which has been encouraging them to return home for more than a year.

EU governments, especially Germany's neighbours, want to establish Union rules so that Bonn (and Italy, which also shelters tens of thousands of refugees) does not shift its burden on to their shoulders.

“If some member states unilaterally push the refugees to leave, they will not go to Bosnia but elsewhere in the Union,” said a diplomat. “There will be uncontrollable movements of people throughout the Union.”

“That has inspired us to stress the need for drawing one line on this subject,” said a Dutch official. “It is an issue we will have to tackle.”

The official said the issue was likely to be raised when EU foreign ministers meet next Monday (20 January).

He added that the Union would seek guidance from the UNHCR when formulating its policy, but stopped short of saying that the UN would dictate EU policy.

The international rule regarding refugees is that no one should be forced home against his or her will. The UNHCR insists it has not reversed this policy, but it has recently announced that “some groups of people that have enjoyed temporary protection in European countries could go back”.

That kind of talk has Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Emma Bonino seething. She has said that if EU nations begin to send Bosnians home before they are ready, she and the Union's aid agency ECHO will “remind everyone what the rules are”.

Germany, which has negotiated agreements with Bosnia's government to ensure some of the refugees are repatriated and security for the returnees, says it is not forcing people to leave despite a national decision last October that the German Länder should examine refugee cases and could oblige individuals to return home. “Our goal, like that of every EU country, is to foster the voluntary return of refugees,” said a German diplomat.

Meanwhile, Foreign Affairs Commissioner Hans van den Broek is keeping the flame alight under Union efforts to rebuild Bosnia with economic aid. His aides say that creating the conditions to allow Bosnians to find housing and livelihoods at home is “a top priority, if not the top priority of economic reconstruction”.

When they meet next week, EU foreign ministers will also look at the coming year's plans for reconstruction in Bosnia and prepare for another EU-hosted donors' conference this spring.

Germany's generous financial aid to Bosnia is primarily aimed at rebuilding the war-torn republic's infrastructure. Now, say many European diplomats, it is time for Bosnians to lend a hand with that project.