Portuguese presidency urged to resolve African migrants crisis

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will urge the incoming Portuguese presidency to resolve problems over which EU state is responsible for receiving migrants picked up at sea.

The appeal will be made in a paper published tomorrow (15 June) which will also call on Lisbon to encourage member states to take a more consistent approach to how they treat Iraqi asylum-seekers, given the great discrepancies across the EU on asylum acceptance rates.

UNHCR will offer to help achieve an EU-level resolution to the problem of deciding which state should accept immigrants picked up at sea but will stress the obligation of states to help in rescue operations.

The issue has been highlighted recently after Malta refused to accept immigrants picked up by boats outside its search and rescue zone. Tonio Borg, the Maltese minister for justice and home affairs, on Tuesday (12 June) urged other EU ministers to take people picked up outside the zone but most states opposed the idea.

"It seems very difficult. I do not see, technically, how we could do that," said the French Minister for Immigration and National Identity Brice Hortefeux. Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s interior mini-ster, said that the EU was "not going to leave Malta high and dry" and that EU ambassadors would discuss the issue "in the coming weeks with a view to bringing about a perma-nent solution". But it is not clear if such a solution would involve Malta’s plea for burden-sharing.

The Portuguese presidency will make immigration one of its top priorities and will support the European Commission’s call to strengthen Frontex, the EU’s border agency. UNHCR will warn that Frontex’s operations to stop illegal immigrants coming to Europe should not prevent people needing to make asylum claims getting the protection they need. The UN body will also warn Lisbon about proposals to allow police access to Eurodac, a database which stores fingerprints of asylum-seekers, designed to prevent "asylum-shopping" across the EU. UNHCR says that asylum-seekers should not come under criminal suspicion and that safeguards should be set up to secure the data stored.

While just six EU states accept people who have already been recognised as refugees, UNHCR will call on Portugal to open a debate on getting more countries involved in the resettlement programme. The programme is important for helping particularly vulnerable people, such as people in need of medical help, single women with children or ethnic groups, stationed in refugee camps. UNHCR has appealed for EU states to take in up to 13,000 resettled Iraqi refugees but so far has received offers for just a couple of hundred refugees.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will urge the incoming Portuguese presidency to resolve problems over which EU state is responsible for receiving migrants picked up at sea.