The European Parliament’s Civil Liberties Committee has given the nod to the creation of a programme under which refugees from Tunisia, Egypt and Libya will be resettled in EU member states.
Member states resettling refugees from non-EU countries will receive a grant of €6,000 per refugee for the first year and another €5,000 for the second through the European Refugee Fund.
The programme is expected to get the green light from the EU this week and start operating next year,
The aim of the programme is to encourage member states to resettle more refugees – a measure that has been conspicuously absent from the EU, particularly when measured against what the US and Canada do.
According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, more than 172,000 people need to be resettled in 2012, while the global number of resettlement places is only about 80,000.
In 2010, the EU resettled around 4,700 people, representing only 4.4 per cent of those resettled worldwide that year, far behind the US (54,000 refugees) and Canada (6,700).
Nationalist MEP Simon Busuttil – the EPP’s leader in this committee, who has been advocating the need for an intra-EU resettlement programme to help countries like Malta and Italy – told The Times that although this development was not exactly what Malta was after, it was still a step forward.
“I still welcome this vote as by offering resettlement to refugees from third countries, this programme still helps EU countries like Malta that face migratory pressure,” he told The Times.
“It relieves the pressure on Malta and other southern member states as refugees will be able to apply for resettlement directly from third countries rather than undertake the dangerous crossing across the Mediterranean,” he argued.
Dr Busuttil pointed out this was the first time the EU was adopting its own Resettlement Programme and this comes after a long-drawn process that had to overcome strong resistance in the Council from several member states.
“The European Parliament was instrumental in overcoming this resistance,” he said.
EU member states, particularly the Northern ones, are not very keen on resettlement and have already signalled their opposition to plans by the Commission to create a permanent programme to resettle existing refugees from one EU country to another.
Although the Commission has said that it would wait for a study on a pilot-project created for Malta in 2009 before deciding whether to propose a permanent intra-EU resettlement programme, it is already clear that many member states are against the idea arguing that this will act as a pull factor for asylum seekers and irregular immigrants to the EU.
The EUREMA (European Resettlement Malta) pilot project – created in 2009 – achieved little interest, so much so that only a minority of member states offered to participate and resettle refugees and people with international protection from Malta.
The overwhelming majority of refugees from Malta were resettled by Germany and France while other participating member states only made token pledges.