Comments given by the Interior Ministers of Austria and Sweden prior to the start of an EU Justice and Home Affairs council meeting being held in Brussels today clearly indicate that there will be no consensus among the 27 member states on the establishment of an immediate burden sharing mechanism for asylum seekers as demanded by six Southern Mediterranean member states, including Malta, in the wake of the current turmoil.
Calling Italy’s request for burden sharing as “an exaggeration”, Sweden’s Interior Minister Johan Bilstrom said that last year his country received 32,000 asylum seekers.
“We did not call upon anyone to share the burden with us,” he said in a direct snub at Italy’s request.
“Italy has only received 5000 immigrants from Tunisia at Lampedusa and we think that it can cope on its own with this situation,” he said.
Asked whether his country will help Malta and Italy in the case of a Libyan exodus, he said that this has not happened yet.
“With regards to Libya we have not seen any biblical exodus yet so let’s not be so alarmist,” he said.
Austria’s Interior Minister Maria Fekter also adopted the same line stating clearly that her country is against relocating asylum seekers around the EU.
“We think that Italy, a country of 55 million can cope very well on its own to handle 5000 immigrants,” she said.
“There are only 50 out of the 5000 who are real asylum seekers as the others are economic migrants,” she said.
Asked about Libya, she said that this is another issue and the EU should be prepared. However she said that even in this case, Austria would be against obligatory burden sharing.
MIFSUD BONNICI IN STRONG REACTION
Taking the floor, Minister for Justice and Home Affairs Carm Mifsud Bonnici strongly dismissed the comments by Swedish Minister Tobias Billstrom. He insisted that there were already strong indications that the flow of migrants in the Mediterranean would be higher than in previous years.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres said that if a migratory movement from Libya were to start, he expected to see more solidarity and better burden sharing between member states. This will hold truer if the country descended into civil war.