The European Union is drawing up a plan to overhaul its 1951 Refugee Convention that prevents countries from rejecting asylum seekers at their borders in a belated effort to address Europe’s exploding migrant crisis. The Times has the story.
There is a growing consensus across Europe that the 1951 Refugee Convention, drafted after the Second World War and added to by rulings in the European and EU courts, is no longer fit for purpose.
“It should be noted that these principles were developed after the end of the Second World War, and were characterised by a very different geopolitical situation to that of today,” said a diplomatic paper seen by the Times.
The 1951 convention is signed by 144 countries and defines legal obligations for countries enshrined in the fundamental principle of non-refoulement. This principle establishes that no asylum seeker may be returned to a country where his or her life or freedom could be seriously threatened.
This is becoming increasingly called into question as European countries have struggled to deal with millions of requests for refugee status over the past decade and to return failed asylum seekers.
EU governments are concerned that national powers allowing “limitations on the application” of the right of asylum are currently only permitted in “extraordinary situations” that do not take the “new reality” into account, the paper states.
“A broader reference to the challenges we face needs to be considered,” it continues. “The lack of alternatives to accepting applications for international protection and the respect of the principle of non-refoulement certainly require in-depth discussion.”
The paper, drafted by Poland and discussed by EU interior ministers last Thursday, precedes new proposals this spring to accelerate deportation of failed asylum seekers and to deport refugees or other migrants involved in crime.
European governments hope the measures “could also stimulate discussion of the issue internationally”, said the paper, leading to potential legal changes to the convention backed by countries such as Britain or the US. …
EU plans for new rules allowing deportations and the creation of repatriation centres outside European territory are one of the “innovative solutions” planned for this year that will be challenged in courts as a breach of the convention.
Giorgia Meloni’s Government in Italy has pressed ahead with plans to process asylum seekers in Albania despite two court rulings that have challenged the “accelerated border procedure” on the grounds it undermines the right to asylum established by the refugee convention.
In many European countries, notably Germany, failed asylum seekers or refugees with permanent residence have committed violent crimes and murders while remaining in the country under the protection of refugee laws that have prevented their deportation.
Worth reading in full.
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The penny drops… but so very slowly.
So slowly it’s no longer a penny, it got decimalised………….
Lol
By the time the penny lands Marine Le Pen will be ruling France. the AfD will be in a German Coalition Government and Farage will be PM here.
Popularism is a wonderful thing – it gets the tyrants to switch track ever so slightly. Given the choice between popularists and tyrants I choose neither. Both are suboptimal. Optimal is not only neither of the above but, better, nothing at all. I do not accept that a choice of slave master is freedom, the boss who whips and the boss who rapes are both far from a match to having no boss at all. You may believe we need to have a boss. You may well need that, but I do not. I see the belief in the legitimacy and the utility of ‘the state’ is an indoctrinated cult, a self-perpetuating paradigm, from birth to grave, created by a predatory ruling class to hold us, the human herd of tax cattle, spellbound and subjugated on their tax-farms.
I don’t consider that I have a “boss”. The state is there to serve me. It doesn’t do that very well as far as I am concerned, but it’s not my “boss”.
I guess I’m a minarchist. I struggle to envisage how you’d avoid centralising certain functions and delegating some authority, including the legal backing to coerce the raising of taxes. But it’s somewhat academic – we’re not even going to get close to that as the majority seem to be moving in the opposite direction.
They are afraid that the whole EU project is about to collapse so they offer just enough to placate the masses, only to rein it all in again later on. If asylum/immigration drops significantly I will eat my hat. 10 million more destined to come here over the next few years according to the ONS. I am jealous of the US right now.
Gee sounds like Trumps plan. Nice the EU are finally coming to terms with reality
No mention of the critical change made in the 1960s to expand the scope of the 1951 Refugee Convention to cover lots of other countries given the lack of refugees within Europe by that time.
The Refugee Convention belongs to the United Nations, not the EU. It has nothing specifically to do with Europe, and the EU cannot amend it (although it could of course propose amendments).
We also ought to look at the actual text of the Convention.
It defines a refugee as someone with a “well-founded fear of persecution” in their own country. “Well-founded” is clear and ought to rule out tendentious claims, but seems not to in Europe including Britain.
It also says that member states shall not (as Wikipedia puts it)
“impose penalties on refugees who entered illegally in search of asylum if they present themselves without delay (Article 31), which is commonly interpreted to mean that their unlawful entry and presence ought not to be prosecuted at all”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_Relating_to_the_Status_of_Refugees
Presenting themselves without delay surely ought at least to mean that they did not pass through a safe country on the way.
So the problem here is not the Convention. The problem is activist courts who have made perverse rulings that widen the scope of the words in the Convention.
As in many areas, the will of our elected governments is being undermined by judicial activism, aka lawfare. If courts continue to make nakedly political rulings, then this will lead to calls to undermine their independence, which would be unfortunate.
Ah … but what the EU does is to gather up any and all conventions or treaties issued previously by, say the UN (or in the case of Trade by the OECD) issue them on EU headed paper, which automatically become binding on ALL EU member states whether they signed up to it previously or not. Since the Refugee convention created the original rules, the EU has added to them by creating the Dublin Regulation (in 1990 in Dublin) which they have modified twice since then (Dublin II and Dublin III).
This is a good example of the EU marching ‘forward’ in its ‘mission’ (More Europe, More Europe, Ever Closer Union, Ever Closer union) but in recent years when trying to enforce these new rules, the attempts have been thwarted notably by the government of Hungary who have consistently vetoed them.
Somehow (I don’t know how) the EU gang managed to get their ‘Pact for Migration’ done early last year bypassing the meeting that would have vetoed it. That comes into force in June 2026. All EU member states will be allocated quotas of migrants (presumably each month) and they will have to comply or face substantial fines for every migrant they refuse.