EU/Holland: European Union justice and home affairs ministers were divided yesterday over a German proposal to set up transit camps in north Africa for refugees seeking entry into the EU, writes Denis Staunton in Scheveningen.
The European Commission and the Dutch EU presidency agreed, however, to fund a United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) pilot scheme to help five North African countries deal with asylum-seekers.
Germany's Interior Minister, Mr Otto Schily, outlined to ministers at the Dutch seaside resort of Scheveningen a plan for the EU to process some asylum applications outside the EU's borders. Mr Schily stressed that, under his plan, refugees who reach the EU or are apprehended in European territorial waters would continue to be processed under the existing asylum system.
He suggested, however, that the EU could process some asylum-seekers at centres in north Africa, perhaps applying UNHCR procedures rather than the standards used in EU member-states.
"We must stop illegal migration in the Mediterranean and should consider reception centres," he said.
The Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner, Mr Antonio Vitorino, said he was open to ideas about processing asylum applications outside the EU.
He said that the EU should only co-operate in such a way with countries that had signed the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees, and that it must be clear where responsibility for the refugees lay. Mr Vitorino said that the EU-funded pilot schemes with Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya would help those countries develop their asylum laws and train personnel capable of processing asylum demands.
He stressed that, unlike those envisaged under the German proposal, the centres would not treat asylum demands for EU countries but that the refugees could ask for asylum only in the country where such a centre is.
"The asylum system will remain the national system for each state," he said.
The French Interior Minister, Mr Dominique De Villepin, said the German proposal raised more questions than answers and he questioned how such a scheme would be financed. Mr De Villepin also suggested that such asylum camps outside Europe could attract human traffickers.
The Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, told The Irish Times that he shared such concerns and was not yet convinced that the German proposal would benefit the EU or the refugees seeking entry.
"Are you creating on the coast of North Africa a latter-day Gaza Strip?" he said.
Mr McDowell said that although he retained an open mind about the idea of processing asylum applications outside the EU, such a scheme would have to be accompanied by a major development programme.
"The onus lies very firmly on the member-states who are proposing it to show how this will improve matters," he said.