ZAGREB, June 6, 2018 – Croatian Interior Minister Davor Božinović said in Luxembourg on Tuesday that sensitive issues such as the planned reform of the Common European Asylum System required a broad consensus rather than resorting to outvoting which could not bring about a viable policy in the long run.
“In my mind, it is of great importance to have everybody agree on such matters. Any outvoting would not be conducive to a long-term viable policy,” said Božinović, who attended a meeting of the Justice and Home Affairs Council in Luxembourg.
The main topic on the meeting’s agenda was reforming the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). European Union member-states have been trying for two years to reach an agreement on reforming the Dublin Regulation which envisages that the first member state where fingerprints are stored or an asylum claim is lodged is responsible for dealing with a person’s asylum claim. The rule proved to be inefficient during the climax of the migrant crisis in 2015.
Božinović said that during the current Bulgarian chairmanship over the EU bloc, great progress had been made in efforts to overhaul the CEAS, however, there were still some issues at which member-states looked differently. Those issues will be on the agenda of an EU summit meeting scheduled for the end of this month.
Attempts are being made to strike a balance between the principles of solidarity and responsibility as well as between the growing insistence on the protection of the external borders and the fact that inside the Schengen zone controls are being introduced due to the secondary movement of migrants, he said.
The purpose of the Dublin Regulation reform is to help the countries that are first exposed to the influx of migrants, such as Italy and Greece.
The Commission has proposed the introduction of an automatic mechanism of redistribution of asylum-seekers to EU member-states.
Božinović said that for the countries that bear the brunt of the influx of migrants it would be important to take into account a set of factors for criteria for assessing the contribution of individual member-states to the asylum policy.
