Beware of compulsory burden sharing - Dutch minister

Italy's move to send immigrants back to Libya forced the EU to discuss the problem more seriously but Europe now needed to set up a proper framework that would safeguard human rights, the Dutch Junior Minister for Justice Nebahat Albayrak, said yesterday.

Addressing a joint press conference with Justice Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici, she backed the proposal to set up an asylum agency in Libya by which migrants can be processed before being allocated to different EU member states. This would then be done through a system of quotas that would determine how many refugees each country could take.

"Malta and the Netherlands are willing to take responsibility and integrate newcomers but they want to do it justly and they want the distribution of refugees in the EU to be balanced," she said.

However, she said the compulsory burden-sharing the government was pursuing could have "disastrous" consequences for Malta because it could attract more asylum-seekers to make the treacherous journey from Africa.

A "structured" approach was needed to ensure effective burden-sharing.

Dr Mifsud Bonnici said that while Malta was asking for compulsory burden-sharing, the most important thing was to have a mechanism that worked, regardless of whether it was obligatory or not.

Ms Albayrak said that resettling migrants across Europe could only be "part of a bigger plan" and the EU needed to send a clear message to African migrants that unless they were genuine refugees they would be stopped at the border.

She visited Malta after having been to Greece and Cyprus to get a clearer picture of the situation in the southern borders of the EU. Here she was taken to the open and detention centres with Dr Mifsud Bonnici and the two also took a helicopter ride to take in the small size of the island.

Contrary to what has been stated in reports about conditions at Malta's detention and open centres, Ms Albayrak said that although there was a lot of room for improvement, what Malta was offering was "quite an achievement" considering the volume of migrants that arrived in such a short span of time.

She praised Dr Mifsud Bonnici as "the most active minister" in the European Justice and Home Affairs Council and said he was fighting effectively for Europe to address the immigration situation.

She said the immigration pact had been the first step towards a common EU policy to tackle the issue and the Netherlands had actively supported Malta in its cause to bring the issue to Europe's agenda.

While the Netherlands was not prepared to take more migrants from Malta at this stage, it was the first to voluntarily resettle migrants from Malta.

She stressed that it was now the turn of other EU countries, especially those without immigration problems of their own, to share in the burden. "I am a believer in Europe. If there is one area where Europe works, it is in asylum. Problems like this cannot be solved on a national basis."