The European Union began to approve a tightness on the right of asylum, making it easier for member countries to send asylum seekers to third countries, contracting the reception charges to them and reducing the possibility of appeal against an expulsion order.
The Commission presented its proposal to modify the rules on the application of the concept of ‘Safe third country’, with the declared objective of speeding up asylum procedures and reducing pressure on national systems.
The concept of a secure third country allows Member States to consider inadmissible a request for protection when applicants could receive it in another nation considered safe for them.
For Italy it is excellent news, because a reform of the genre would open the doors to systems such as the one who would like to put Premier Giorgia Meloni in place, who opened reception centers in Albania who should host migrants saved at sea.
What changes
When a country is declared safe, this means that asylum questions for migrants from that nation can be easily rejected, lacking precisely the need for protection for its citizens. But a secure third country is also a country where a migrant can be sent, although not originally from there, after having entered the European territory irregular, thus delegating to his government the task of managing a possible demand for protection. According to current EU law, however, it is necessary to demonstrate a concrete link between the applicant and that country.
With the Commission’s proposal, which must now be approved by Parliament and EU Council, this requirement will no longer be mandatory: Member States will be able to apply the concept even in the absence of a link, as long as there are agreements or intended with the state in question that guarantee the examination of the application and, if justified, the granting of protection.
The Commission claims that the concept should now also be applied to countries where migrants have simply transited, opening the door to the North African countries such as Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia, but also to countries with which bilateral agreements have been stipulated, such as Albania or also potentially the Rwanda, with which the United Kingdom, for example, had stipulated a pact for the reception of its refugees.
Not only that, the Member States will be able to choose to apply the concept of a secure third country in the presence of a connection defined by national law, thus having almost a sort of white paper.
No appeal
In addition to this, the Commission proposes that the appeals against the decisions of inadmissibility of an asylum application, based on the concept of a secure third country, no longer have an automatic suspension effect of a possible procedure for sending a migrant to that nation, but serves a definitive sentence. However, the only ones to be excluded from this new definition would be the unaccompanied minors, who will continue to have to be welcomed on European soil.
Safe country
A third country can be considered safe only if it satisfies a series of conditions, such as protection against rejection, the absence of a real risk of serious damage and threats to life and freedom due to the race, religion, nationality, belonging to a social group or political opinions, as well as the possibility of asking and receiving effective protection.
At the moment, the Commission has drawn up a first EU list of safe countries that includes Kosovo, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Morocco and Tunisia. However, the member countries have their national lists and, for example, in the Italian one there are 19 nations: Albania, Algeria, Bangladesh, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Morocco, Montenegro, Peru, Senegal, Serbia, Sri Lanka and Tunisia.
Italy exults
The proposal of the Commission shows “The validity and effectiveness of the approach adopted by the Meloni government”, exulted the Italian Minister for European affairs Tommaso Foti, according to which “of particular importance is also the forecast that appeals against transfers to secure third countries will no longer result in the automatic suspension of the procedure, thus avoiding abuse and slowdowns”.
For the European People’s Party, the proposal of the Commission “transmits the right message”. Now “the definition of common criteria for the identification of secure third countries is the missing piece of the European common asylum system and a crucial step towards the creation of an efficient, manageable and fair system”, said the PPE spokesman for internal affairs, Lena DuPont in a note.
