Council of the European Union: negotiations on EUROSUR, Asylum Procedures Directive and Eurodac

EUROSUR
The Irish Presidency has prepared a document containing the proposals of the Commission and the positions of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning the EUROSUR regulation. The Presidency has also included comments and compromise text proposals and invites delegations to agree with them for the purpose of making further progress in the next trilogue with the European Parliament, which will take place on 27 March.

See the full text of the document here.

Asylum Procedures Directive
The Presidency has submitted compromise proposals to the COREPER for the outstanding issues concerning the draft text for the recast of the Asylum Procedures Directive. These are the special rules for victims of torture and other serious forms of violence and unaccompanied minors. The Presidency proposes, among others:

-To eliminate Article 31(8), which precludes automatic recourse to accelerated procedures when the application for international protection is submitted after an irregular entry into the territory or at the border. This provision would be replaced by a recital equally precluding automatic recourse to border or accelerated procedures upon lack of documents on entry or the use of forged documents.

-The mention of "sufficient time" in Article 24 as a form of adequate support to be provided to applicants in need of special procedural guarantees is deleted from that article and included in Recital 23.

-A reference to the minor's wellbeing and social development is included in Recital 26 as part of the considerations for the assessment of children's best interests.

-Member States shall not apply accelerated and border procedures where adequate support cannot be provided to applicants in need of special procedural guarantees within the framework of such procedures. In addition, these applicants must be allowed to remain in the territory of the Member State where they filed their application while national authorities decide on their right to remain pending the examination of their appeals.

-In the case of unaccompanied minors, accelerated procedures may only be applied if applicants come from safe countries of origin, if they have submitted an admissible subsequent application or if they may be considered a danger to national security. Border procedures may be applied in case of provenance from a safe country of origin, of a subsequent application, danger to national security, existence of a safe third country, presentation of false documents or destruction of travel or identity documents in bad faith. These two last provisions may only be applied when there are serious grounds to consider that the applicant is attempting to conceal relevant elements which would likely lead to a negative decision.

Read the full text of the proposals here.

Eurodac
The Council Presidency has presented a compromise package to the COREPER on issues of political importance for both the Parliament and the Council concerning the draft Eurodac Regulation. Some of these are the conditions of access to Eurodac data for law-enforcement purposes, the transfer of data to third countries, the period of storage of data of third-country nationals apprehended in connection with irregular crossing of the border of a Member State and the availability of data of beneficiaries of international protection for law-enforcement purposes. The Presidency seeks to be given a mandate to conduct the fourth informal trilogue with the European Parliament on the basis of this package.

Read the full compromise package here.

This item was reproduced with the permission of ECRE from the weekly ELENA legal update supported by the Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Funding Programme and distributed by email. The purpose of these updates is to inform asylum lawyers and legal organizations supporting asylum seekers and refugees of recent developments in the field of asylum law. Please note that the information provided is taken from publicly available information on the internet. Every reasonable effort is made to make the content accurate and up to date at the time each item is published but no responsibility for its accuracy and correctness, or for any consequences of relying on it, is assumed by ECRE, the IRC or its partners.