IRELAND: New EU regulations may overwhelm asylum systems in new EU border states such as Slovenia and Poland, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Mr Ruud Lubbers, warned yesterday in Dublin.
One such regulation stipulates that asylum-seekers can be sent back to the first EU state they enter.
Mr Lubbers said those seeking entry to the EU for economic reasons were more likely to be coming from countries such as Belarus, rather than Sierra Leone, so this regulation would have worrying implications for a country like Poland which has a border with Belarus
Fingerprinting and registration systems also meant that asylum-seekers could be more easily identified if they moved from state to state.
"If we are not careful, we risk overwhelming fragile and under-resourced asylum systems in the new EU [East European\] member-states," he said.
There was already evidence that Slovenia was dealing with a major increase in numbers.
"There are new EU states in central Europe which currently only have 10 or 15 asylum assessors.
"A decade ago they had no asylum systems at all. What is going to happen if thousands of extra asylum-seekers are sent back to them from the inner EU countries?"
Mr Lubbers said this would be "particularly ironic" at a time when the numbers of asylum-seekers were falling.
Some governments believed this fall in numbers was a result of their tighter restrictions but he believed it was because of work his agency was doing in finding regional solutions so that people did not need to leave their countries.
As numbers were falling, ministers should "be a little more generous" in accepting applications, Mr Lubbers said.
He was speaking after he addressed the EU Justice and Home Affairs Council at Dublin Castle yesterday.
He outlined a series of proposals to the ministers to deal with this anticipated problem.
The UN refugee agency has proposed that central EU reception centres be set up so that the claims of some categories of asylum-seekers could be processed by experienced teams of staff drawn from across the EU.
Mr Lubbers said he expected it would take some time for this proposal to be accepted by member-states, as ministers may want to retain responsibility for processing the asylum-seekers who enter their countries.
He also urged that EU states should not over rely on the so-called "safe countries" plan.
Under this concept, would-be asylum-seekers can be returned to these countries, or even sent there if their own country is not safe.
