EUAA operation planning and coordination , Date: 2022.09.13, format: Article, area: Asylum and refugee protection

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The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) has supported the EUAA for many years by seconding experts to different European Member States. These secondments are carried out in the countries in question on the basis of operating plans. BAMF staff are providing support in for instance Greece (in Athens amongst other places), Italy (Bari, Rome and Trieste), Malta, Spain (Madrid and the Canary Islands), and Cyprus.

The experts for instance carry out the following tasks and functions:

  • interviews and case-handling
  • communicating information
  • the Dublin procedure
  • special officers assigned for vulnerable groups or traumatised asylum applicants

EUAA experts registered 11,000 applications for international protection in 2021 in Greece alone, and held more than 20,600 interviews. EUAA staff in Italy who were deployed to process Dublin cases amongst other things helped to process 2,494 take back requests in 2021. Cyprus observed an 82 percent year-on-year increase in the application numbers in 2021, after which the EUAA expanded its operative support. The secondment of additional experts, which amongst other things led to an almost twofold increase in the number of interviews (+ 86 percent), resulted in a major lightening of the burden on the asylum system in Cyprus (EUAA Annual General Report 2021).

The EUAA Regulation suggests several scenarios in Article 16 where the Member States’ experts are deployed:

  • in operational support for implementing the CEAS (Art. 16(1)(a))
  • at the request of a Member State where its asylum or reception system is subject to disproportionate pressure (Art. 16(1)(b))
  • through the deployment of “migration management support teams” where the Member State faces disproportionate migratory challenges (Art. 16(1)(c))
  • on the initiative of the EUAA to support a Member State the asylum or reception system of which is subject to disproportionate pressure (Art. 16(1)(d))
  • where it provides operational and technical assistance as part of the EUAA’s newly-introduced monitoring mechanism (Art. 16(1)(e) in conjunction with Art. 22)

Asylum Reserve Pool (ARP)

When the EUAA Regulation came into force, the EUAA also created a new, additional “Asylum Reserve Pool” (ARP). The ARP was established during the existing pool for support activities in implementing the CEAS (in accordance with Art. 16(1)(a)) in order to be able to react more quickly to emergency situations, especially where there is disproportionate pressure on the asylum and/or reception system of a Member State. The ARP is made up of 500 experts with a wide variety of profiles from the asylum and reception area of the EU Member States. These experts are to be quickly deployed in asylum support teams in crisis scenarios (in accordance with Art. 16(1)(b), (c) and (d), as well as Art. 22). The Federal Office also provides experts for the newly-established ARP.

Größer darstellen Source: © European Union Agency for Asylum