2023-06-09 22:01:05
Issued on Saturday 10 June 2023
Innsbruck (OTS) – By agreeing on the principles of an asylum system, the European interior ministers are showing that the Union can be better than its battered reputation. This sign of life can undermine the populists and complainers.
Where is the EU failing? Depending on your point of view, everyone will answer this question differently. However, there is one topic that appears in almost every list of European failures: asylum and migration. Emotions have been running high since 2015, when hundreds of thousands of people made their way to Europe, some of them on foot. Between political camps, between parties, between governments and between states. The EU opponents and skeptics can rub their hands, also with a view to the elections to the European Parliament in a year.
Against this background, the agreement reached by the interior ministers on the main features of a new asylum system is all the more remarkable. The positions were far apart. And now the approval ranges from the Austrian asylum hardliner Gerhard Karner to the German social democrat Nancy Faeser.
The representatives of a tough course have prevailed. An initial check should already be carried out at the EU’s external border. Anyone who has little prospect of asylum should not get any further and should have to start their journey home from there. This agreement follows the insight that a legal vacuum in Europe will never help those affected, but only serve the bad business of human traffickers and anti-European populists.
But it is also clear that those who are being persecuted and are looking for protection will find it more difficult to come to Europe. The agreement is in the sign of foreclosure. Only tight borders can ensure that people smugglers do not first smuggle their victims past the new asylum centers back to Europe.
But the sign of life in the asylum question can undermine the grumblers and populists who blame Brussels for all the misery. Failure is not allowed. Not with the details that are open. A lot has to be clarified first. How are the asylum centers equipped? How freely can migrants move? Will it really be possible to organize quick returns and deportations from these centers?
But above all: How compatible is all this with human rights? Despite a quick check, is it ensured that whoever needs protection gets protection? Can we prevent brutal pushbacks from becoming the new normal?
The European institutions have a lot of work ahead of them. Time is running out for this when the new system is due out this year
should be decided.
However, there is no alternative if the image of the EU’s failure on the asylum issue is not to become permanently ingrained.
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