PRO ASYL Presseerklärung | Press Release

21 January 2004

Justice and Home Affairs Informal Council in Dublin

ECRE strictly rejects German third country rule
“Super safe third country” rule is worst case scenario for refugee politics

Ahead of the meeting of EU Home Affairs Ministers on 22/23 January, PRO ASYL demands once more that the red-green coalition ceases its attempt to embed the German safe third country rule into European asylum legislation by any means possible.

Eleven years after the constitution amendment, the German model for a third country rule would create a worst case scenario in asylum politics in the club of 25 member states: the termination of the individual right to asylum in Europe, says Karl Kopp, consultant for European affairs at PRO ASYL. The 78 member organizations at the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) unmistakably reject the German proposal.

The German “super safe third country” rule, as it is called belittlingly in EU jargon, implies an extensive denial of asylum in the widened European Union. Accordingly, asylum seekers may be sent back to “new safe third countries” by border guards without having had their individual asylum claims examined.

Those future “safe third countries” are Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Rumania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Turkey – states in which human rights are violated on a daily basis and international refugee rights are yet non existent.

If the German Federal Republic exports its unlawful standard via the directive on asylum procedures, the new EU members states will toughen their national legislation immediately, thereby using Germany as a role-model. Instead of assisting the new member states in developing acceptable systems of reception, the old EU members provide for an arsenal of measures to deny asylum. The EU’s neighbouring areas will follow this example. This emerging domino effect is a threat to the existing international system of refugee protection.

In view of PRO ASYL, the EU Home Affairs Minister’s results of almost five years of negotiation proves to be a disaster: on the way to create a common European asylum legislation, a continent initiates the withdrawal from the right to asylum instead of creating mandatory standards of protection. Instead of creating a European asylum legislation, responsibility for the protection of refugees is shifted to Non-EU States and regions of origin. What is especially ironic about that is that the red-green coalition in Berlin has clearly encouraged and shaped this disastrous development, concludes Kopp.