The European Union should consider introducing a quota system among its member states to distribute the growing number of asylum seekers fleeing to Europe, the UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) said Tuesday.
“We are witnessing a staggering acceleration of displacement by conflict,” Antonio Guterres told reporters in Stockholm after talks with members of the Swedish cabinet.
According to latest UN figures, an estimated 3.8 million people have fled Syria since the conflict started, in 2011.
EU member states were considering more than 240,000 asylum requests in 2014, with just over 20,000 new applicants registering that year, according to the bloc’s statistics office Eurostat.
While lauding Germany and Sweden for assuming their “fair share,” other European countries need to step up efforts and cooperation to assist refugees from Syria and other crises, Guterres said.
“There must be a European approach in solidarity to the crisis we face.
“Quota systems are always an extreme solution, ideally the system would work naturally to produce a fair share among European countries,” Guterres added.
Germany and France are among a handful of member states that have called on other countries to adopt voluntary refugee quotas. But most have rejected the initiative, which has not been taken up at the European level.
Just five countries – Germany, Sweden, France, Britain and Italy – take in 75 per cent of the EU’s refugees, according to the European Commission.
The current European asylum system “is not working properly,” Guterres said. He noted that while Greece and Italy are the main entry points for asylum seekers to Europe, 46 per cent of asylum applications are actually filed in Germany and Sweden.
While in Stockholm, Guterres also warned that the international community had “reached its limit” when it comes to humanitarian funding.
Sweden has already said it supports his recent proposal of obligatory contributions to fund the UNHCR’s work. This would work in a similar way to how UN peackeeping operations are funded, Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom noted.
GNA
