Ministers of the Interior and Migration of the 28 member states of the European Union discussed Thursday at a meeting of the Justice and Home Affairs Council (JHA), the possibility of establishing reception centers in North African countries that are the starting points for migrants to Europe.
Europe has long been facing strong migratory pressure, and gruesome accounts of dead migrants in the Mediterranean are only a small visible part.
According to the latest data from Frontex, the European agency for border surveillance, “illegal crossings” have tripled from 100,000 to 274,000 between 2013 and 2014. The situation continues to deteriorate in the South and the East. And the European Union meets in a disorganized, lacking a true solidarity among its members.
These centers would do an initial screening by checking whether applicants can actually receive asylum and distributing them fairly among European countries. Italy, especially faced with the migration phenomenon, with more than 8,000 arrivals on its soil since the beginning of the year, is pushing for the establishment of these centers, as well as Germany and Austria.
The Belgian Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration, Theo Francken, for his part, is not favorable to the idea. He fears that these centers would become poles of attraction, destabilizing the surrounding towns, and that migrants whose application for asylum is denied will however try to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe.
With BelgaMetrotime
