EPSU welcomes report of the European Parliament on EU assisting Italy and Greece responding to increase of refugees

(16 September 2016) The number of people seeking asylum and a safe place is growing again in Italy and Greece. The European Commission proposed for the Member States to assist both countries by taking up refugees by sharing fairly asylum responsibility and receiving more refugees. This is not happening fast enough due to resistance of several Member States. The European Parliament adopted a nonbinding resolution addressing this. A key point is that the Parliament asks for more safe and legal routes to be opened. This will stop refugees having no choice but to use extremely dangerous routes. Member States should stop resisting. Only a small percentage of the 160.000 refugees the Member States agreed to relocate from Italy and Greece have been offered a home in another country. There are Member States which have still not accepted a single refugee.

EPSU’s Jan Willem Goudriaan said “The European Parliament sends the right signal: Member States must act in solidarity with the countries that receive most refugees. And give refugees and asylum-seekers a prospect for a better life after all their hardship.”

In the resolution the Parliament rejected a European Commission proposal to take 54,000 places from a scheme for relocating asylum seekers from Greece and Italy to other EU member states, and use them to resettle Syrian refugees from Turkey in the EU instead, as part of the migration deal agreed between Turkey and EU leaders last March. EPSU and many others have criticized the EU-Turkey deal under the Commission proposal, EU countries could deduct Syrian refugees needing international protection who they take in from Turkey from the numbers of asylum-seekers whom they have pledged to relocate from Greece and Italy says the Parliament’s press release. The EP’s rapporteur German Ska Keller underlined that the relocation scheme is a true solidarity instrument that “needs to be strengthened, not watered down”.

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