‘Revolt’ within Macron’s party

Immigration More than half a million given ‘asylum’ in 2017

BRUSSELS, April 19, (Agencies): The European Union gave asylum to more than half a million refugees in 2017, its statistics office Eurostat said on Thursday, with Germany taking in more than 60 percent.

The number was still down by about a quarter compared with 2016, and followed a major surge of migration in 2015 which has strained the bloc’s asylum system and caused political wrangling over how to deal with the influx.

Syrian citizens accounted for about a third of successful asylum cases in 2017, Eurostat said, followed by Afghans and Iraqis.

On a per capita basis, Germany had the most successful asylum cases in 2017, followed by Austria and Sweden. Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland had the fewest successful asylum cases in 2017 on a per capita basis.

Syrians and Eritreans were most likely to get asylum in the EU in 2017, with more than nine in 10 cases being approved, while migrants from Albania and Kosovo were the least likely.

Meanwhile, a top Greek court ruled on Wednesday that migrants landing on Greek islands should no longer be held there while asylum claims are assessed, a decision raising alarm among EU officials in Brussels.

The prospect of new arrivals, often fleeing violence in the Middle East via Turkey, being able to quickly reach mainland Europe from the islands could undermine EU efforts to discourage people leaving Turkey. An EU official described the ruling as a “big worry”. Stopping migrants making the short crossing from Turkey is a key part of European Union policy aimed at avoiding a repeat of the crisis of 2015 when over a million migrants, many of them Syrian refugees, made it to Germany.

Asylum-seekers have been prohibited from travelling beyond five Greek islands since March 2016, when the EU agreed a deal with Ankara to seal the sea route, offering cash to improve conditions for Syrians staying in non-EU member Turkey.

The restriction on leaving the islands, imposed by Greece’s Asylum Service, has resulted in severely overcrowded camps and violent protests over delays in asylum decisions. More than 15,000 asylum-seekers are living in five island camps, more than double their capacity, according to government data.

The Council of State, Greece’s top administrative court, annulled the decision. It found no “serious and overriding reasons of public interest and migration policy to justify the imposition of restriction on movement”, a court official said.

The ruling, effective immediately, applies to new arrivals only and not to asylum-seekers who are already on the islands.

The EU’s executive said it was aware of the ruling but not yet familiar with the details: “It is in any case for the Greek authorities to study and analyse the implications of this decision,” a spokeswoman for the Commission said.

Meanwhile, the French parliament votes Friday on a tough immigration bill that has sparked rumblings of revolt within President Emmanuel Macron’s party, with several MPs openly challenging his plans to speed up deportations of failed asylum-seekers.

The government argues that tighter controls are needed to check the rise of anti-immigration populists, who are on the march across Europe from Berlin to Budapest after suffering a setback in last year’s French elections.

“I fear that if we do not resolve the problem facing us ... others will do it without any humanity,” Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said earlier this month.

Collomb