Press release from the ALDE-group, 2013-04-24
The European Parliament’s Civil Liberties Committee confirmed today the agreement reached with Council on two pieces of legislation which are part of the EU Asylum package. One text updates the rules governing the functioning of a database of asylum seeker fingerprints (also known as Eurodac) and its access by police authorities. The second text deals with the setting up of common EU procedures to process the asylum applications in order to overcome the current discrepancies in Member States (also known as Procedures Directive). ALDE welcomes the endorsement of these two important asylum instruments because it paves the way for the final adoption in plenary, normally in June, of the whole Asylum package.
The European Parliament’s Civil Liberties Committee confirmed today the agreement reached with Council on two pieces of legislation which are part of the EU Asylum package. One text updates the rules governing the functioning of a database of asylum seeker fingerprints (also known as Eurodac) and its access by police authorities. The second text deals with the setting up of common EU procedures to process the asylum applications in order to overcome the current discrepancies in Member States (also known as Procedures Directive). ALDE welcomes the endorsement of these two important asylum instruments because it paves the way for the final adoption in plenary, normally in June, of the whole Asylum package.
Cecilia Wikström (Folkpartiet, Sweden) ALDE spokesperson on the new rules establishing minimum standards for the granting of the refugee status said:“An EU asylum system could not be based on as many different procedures as there are Member States. As the present situation teaches us, this has a negative impact both on the asylum seekers and on the Member States”. As statistical figures by Eurostat show the current discrepancy in EU asylum systems exposes certain Member States to a very high number of applications. And applicants experiment the so-called “asylum lottery” as they have different chances to have access to high quality procedures depending on the Member state which processes their applications.
Ms Wikström added: “We haven’t achieved all we wanted, but this legislation will definitely establish better standards. For example, we set clear rules on access to the asylum procedure and on time limits to decide on asylum applications, specific provisions on the identification of people with special needs, and a limited list of grounds for the application of accelerated procedures“.
One of the ALDE core concerns regarding the updated rules governing Eurodac was the introduction of the possibility for Member States’ law enforcement authorities and Europol to access the central database, as unanimously requested by EU countries. ALDE spokesperson on the Eurodac file Sarah Ludford (Lib Dems, UK) said: “While ALDE accepted the potential value of police being able to access this database as part of criminal investigations, we successfully fought to secure a criterion of proportionality and stronger safeguards for individuals’ rights. We insisted that police needed to have specific reasons for access so as to avoid ‘fishing expeditions’ that could stigmatise asylum-seekers and we cut down the storage periods for data. Finally, the monitoring systems we have introduced will help throw up any misuse of the system.”
For more information, please contact:
Linda Aziz, press officer of Cecilia Wikström,
linda.aziz@ep.europa.eu +32 486 94 76 82