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EUROPEAN UNION

EU to resettle 61,000 refugees across Europe over next two years

The European Union has committed to resettling nearly 61,000 refugees in some of its member countries over the next two years. Around 20 percent of world's refugees have been welcomed by the bloc over the last three years.

EU to resettle 61,000 refugees across Europe over next two years
Refugees in Athens Greece. The EU is to settle 61,000 across the bloc over next two years. Photo by Louisa GOULIAMAKI / AFP

“We have, since 2015, resettled and through humanitarian admission programmes giving protection to 175,000 people in the European Union,” European Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson told a press conference on the margins of the United Nations’ Global Refugee Forum in Geneva on Thursday.

“And now, I am happy to announce that for 2024 and 2025 I have, from 14 member states, pledges for resettlement and humanitarian admission (for) … almost 61,000 people,” she said.

Around 31,000 of that total would be resettled via programmes run by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR).

Johansson said the figure was slightly higher than in recent years.

She did not say which 14 of the 27 EU member states would be taking in the refugees.

The UNHCR’s resettlement programmes enable people who have officially sought protection in one country to be transferred to another country that has agreed to admit them, afford them international protection and ultimately give them permanent residence.

Johansson said that over the past three years, bloc members had granted protection to approximately one million people, which meant that the EU was hosting “20 percent of the world’s refugees”.

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EUROPEAN UNION

Denmark joins countries calling for asylum centres outside EU

Denmark is one of 15 EU member states who have sent a joint letter to the European Commission demanding a further tightening of the bloc's asylum policy, which will make it easier to transfer undocumented migrants to third countries, such as Rwanda, including when they are rescued at sea.

Denmark joins countries calling for asylum centres outside EU

The letter, sent to the European Commission on Thursday, comes less than a month before European Parliament elections, in which far-right anti-immigration parties are forecast to make gains.

The letter asks the European Union’s executive arm to “propose new ways and solutions to prevent irregular migration to Europe”.

The group includes Italy and Greece, which receive a substantial number of the people making the perilous journey across the Mediterranean Sea to reach the EU — many seeking to escape poverty, war or persecution, according to the International Organization for Migration.

They want the EU to toughen up its recently adopted asylum pact, which introduces tighter controls on those seeking to enter the 27-nation bloc.
That reform includes speedier vetting of people arriving without documents, new border detention centres and faster deportation for rejected asylum applicants.

The 15 proposed in their letter the introduction of “mechanisms… aimed at detecting, intercepting — or in cases of distress, rescuing — migrants on the high seas and bringing them to a predetermined place of safety in a partner country outside the EU, where durable solutions for those migrants could be found”.

They said it should be easier to send asylum seekers to third countries while their requests for protection are assessed.

They cited the example of a controversial deal that Italy has struck with non-EU Albania, under which Rome can send thousands of asylum seekers plucked from Italian waters to holding camps in the Balkan country until their cases are processed.

The concept in EU asylum law of what constitutes “safe third countries” should be reassessed, they continued.

Safe country debate

EU law stipulates that people arriving in the bloc without documents can be sent to a third country, where they could have requested asylum — so long as that country is deemed safe and the applicant has a genuine link with it.

That would exclude schemes like the divisive law passed by the UK, which has now left the EU, enabling London to refuse all irregular arrivals the right to request asylum and send them to Rwanda.

Rights groups accuse the African country — ruled with an iron fist by President Paul Kagame since the end of the 1994 genocide that killed around 800,000 people — of cracking down on free speech and political opposition.

The 15 nations said they wanted the EU to make deals with third countries along the main migration routes, citing the example of the arrangement it made with Turkey in 2016 to take in Syrian refugees from the war in their home country.

The letter was signed by Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland and Romania.

It was not signed by Hungary, whose Prime Minister Viktor Orban has resisted EU plans to share out responsibility across the bloc for hosting asylum seekers, or to contribute to the costs of that plan.

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