Spotlight: Migration peak also caused by barriers being built: CoE commissioner

The Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, Nils Muiznieks, has said that European policy bore a part of the responsibility for the migration crisis which has divided the continent.

Questioned by Xinhua after an informal meeting with the press in Strasbourg, the commissioner explained that the sudden spike in refugee numbers and the increasing influx of migrants attempting to reach Europe could also be explained by European migratory policy.

The construction of barriers to stop migrants from entering has caused many of them to think that this might be their last chance to reach the European continent before they are permanently blocked, according to Nils Muiznieks.

He lamented, though, that the European Union (EU) has been slow to switch from a security-oriented policy to one based on fundamental rights. "This is not something that emerged suddenly in August of this year," he said.

"I tried to raise the alarm about the situation of Syrian refugees almost two years ago, and in July of last year we did a lot of work on migration in Hungary as well," he explained.

Nils Muiznieks has been in office since 2012, but the inadequacies of national migration policies and the lack of a common European approach have been clear since much earlier in his career, he commented.

"Ten years ago, when I was Latvian minister responsible for social integration, I was in the first [European Union] meetings of ministers responsible for migration, and just next to me there was a minister from an important European country who said 'It's not a question for the European Union. We don't have the expertise in this domain.' And now the politicians from the same country say 'There must be minimal standards everywhere, if not, everyone will come to us'," Muiznieks recounted.

The Dublin system has led to what he called an "unfair" and "unsustainable" strain on frontline countries, such as Italy, Greece and Hungary. In his view, this has also allowed other countries to stand back and watch as frontline countries struggle to cope with the influx.

According to the commissioner, Europe is suffering through the "slow collapse" of its asylum program.

"We still need to overhaul the Dublin system," he declared, but stressed that it needed to happen under certain conditions: "I think that any reform of the Dublin system that doesn't take into account the family ties of people, where they already have relatives in Europe, will not work; people will move where their families are."

Those refugees who are granted a status must receive equal support throughout Europe, he specified: "we need minimal standards of integration support for people once they receive some kind of status, and the current EU standards are insufficient."

The commissioner did see reason for hope, though, noting Tuesday's vote by European Home Affairs Ministers to approve a mandatory redistribution of 120,000 refugees throughout the EU from Greece, Italy and other countries heavily affected by the crisis. Endit