The number of requests Malta made for other countries to accept responsibility for asylum applications grew more significantly between 2008 and 2012 than in most of the EU.
This emerges from EU statistics published last night on the Dublin Regulation, which aims to reduce consecutive transfers of asylum seekers from one member state to another.
Under the regulation, only one member state is responsible for examining an asylum application. The regulation also aims to prevent abuse of the system by the submission of several asylum applications by one person.
Member states send ‘requests’ to each other for the acceptance of responsibility of asylum applications.
The statistics refer to incoming requests (when a country reports requests received from others) and outgoing requests (when a country reports the requests it sent to all other countries).
The vast majority of incoming take-back requests concerned the lack of permission for the asylum seeker to stay
Significantly higher growth in outgoing requests between 2008 and 2012, as compared with other countries, was observed in Estonia, Malta, Greece and Latvia.
However, only in Greece was the number of outgoing requests significant in absolute terms, according to the report.
There are two types of incoming and outgoing requests: ‘take charge’ or ‘take back’. In the case of ‘take back’ requests, the asylum seeker in the requesting country has already submitted an application for asylum in the country receiving the request.
In case of the ‘take charge’ requests, the requesting country considers that other member states should take over responsibility for examining the asylum application of individuals.
Malta received more ‘take back’ than ‘take charge’ requests.
The vast majority of incoming take-charge requests were related to documentation and entry reasons (93 per cent).
The remaining seven per cent were due to family reasons and humanitarian reasons.
The vast majority of incoming take-back requests concerned the lack of permission for the asylum seeker to stay.
Relatively speaking, Malta, Switzerland and the United Kingdom received a lot of incoming requests in 2012, Eurostat said.
Italy and Germany received the most requests for information in 2012. Between 100 and 200 incoming Dublin requests for information were reported by Malta.