EU ministers discuss Iraqi refugees, tougher border protection

Apr 20, 2007, 9:03 GMT

Luxembourg - European Union interior ministers Friday opened day-long talks on the situation of refugees from wartorn Iraq which are not expected to result in EU resettlement plans.

Ministers would not debate proposals to give a new home to Iraqis seeking refuge outside the country, EU diplomats said.

The EU is under pressure from aid agencies to shelter more refugees from Iraq which would ease the burden for neighbouring countries such as Syria and Jordan.

Syria is hosting 1.2 million Iraqis and Jordan 750,000 Iraqi refugees.

Maltese Interior Minister Tonio Borg said the EU should not invoke rules under which all asylum seekers would have to be accepted temporarily without going through the usual asylum procedures.

'But this doesn't mean that beyond the mechanism, one shouldn't seek to find measures to seek resettlement of these (Iraqi) refugees,' Borg told reporters ahead of the meeting in Luxembourg.

Sweden wants to use the EU talks to press for more solidarity in hosting refugees from Iraq.

More than 9,000 Iraqis have found a new home in Sweden which grants refugee status or other protection to almost all Iraqi asylum seekers.

Some 20,000 Iraqis applied for asylum in the EU in 2006 compared to 2005 an increase of 77 per cent. EU officials expect the numbers to rise this year.

Under EU rules adopted in 2001, temporary protection will be provided immediately to refugees from outside the EU 'where there might be a risk that the standard asylum system will be unable to process this influx without severely damaging it.'

The legal tool was developed following the conflicts in former Yugoslavia. However, EU member states have not yet used the rules.

The United Nations have called for a global solution to the Iraqi refugee situation, saying countries worldwide needed to alleviate a mounting humanitarian crisis in the Middle East by taking in Iraqis seeking to escape violence in the strife-torn country.

Borg also called on EU members to step up their help for the bloc's southern states which are struggling to cope with an influx of illegal immigrants, mainly from poor African countries.

Burden-sharing would not only mean financial help 'but should also take the form of sharing protective persons arriving at the peripheral states of Europe,' Borg said.

About half a million illegal immigrants enter the EU every year. Spain and other southern member states have said repeatedly that the bloc lets them down in tackling the immigration crisis.

Nearly 30,000 undocumented immigrants from Africa landed on Spain's Canary Islands last year, more than four times as many as during all of 2005. Italy and Malta have also seen mass arrivals of illegal immigrants on their coasts.

The EU's interior chiefs plus officials from Norway and Iceland are also due to press ahead with efforts to step up Europe's border controls.

EU states have significantly increased their pledges to provide the bloc's border control agency with technical equipment needed to cope with another influx of illegal immigrants, EU diplomats said.

New support for the EU's border control agency Frontex would also include aircraft and satellite monitoring systems.

Ministers are also expected to proceed with plans to establish teams of national experts that can be deployed quickly to support member states faced with massive arrivals of illegal immigrants.

New support for the border control agency would also include aircraft and satellite monitoring systems.