By Desmond Hinton-Beales - 5th October 2011
Humanitarian teams must have access to vulnerable populations and they in turn must have access to humanitarian assistance
Jean-François Mattei, President of the French Red Cross
The EU has been urged to improve its "out of date" asylum and migration legislation.
Speaking at a panel discussion in the European parliament on Tuesday, British socialist MEP Claude Moraes said that the "whole world is looking at the asylum and refugee situation in the Mediterranean".
Moraes was referring to the influx of refugees fleeing conflicts in north Africa to countries such as Italy.
The event, which took place to mark the 60th anniversary of the UN convention relating to the status of refugees, was co-organised with the Red Cross EU office, the European Council on Refugees and Exiles and the UN Refugee Agency
Moraes called for the negotiations over the EU's asylum package to be settled, saying that the piece of legislation had been a "source of great frustration" and that "member states have been refusing to move, refusing to make law".
The EU must move in a "credible direction", he said, upholding decent values and the "norms of human rights law".
The convention on refugee status was originally signed in 1951 and only covered events occurring before this year and within Europe. It has since been the subject of a single amendment in 1967 which removed these time and location restrictions.
The British S&D deputy repeatedly called on the Polish presidency to send a clear message and push for the completion of the common asylum package by the allotted deadline of 2012.
President of the French Red Cross Jean-François Mattei said that the topic of asylum and migration is paramount, especially in light of the new "toughening of national policies".
Mattei said that the Red Cross will no longer be silent on this issue, adding that "human rights must be reaffirmed" as they are "so obvious, sometimes people forget".
"Humanitarian teams must have access to vulnerable populations and they in turn must have access to humanitarian assistance", said Mattei, stressing that the "legal system is denying access to first level care".
Kris Pollet, senior legal and policy advisor at the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, said that despite national hysteria, the refugee numbers which the EU is dealing with are "manageable compared to the rest of the world".
"This is a unique chance to work together and create a common asylum system," said Pollet.
"The rest of the world is watching to see how Europe handles this," he said.
Asylum working party coordinator for the Polish presidency Karolina Marcjanik said that the asylum package is reliant on a mutually acceptable agreement between member states and agreed that the 2012 deadline must be adhered to.
Marcjanik said that it could not be denied that the EU member states and institutions had reacted quickly to the problems in north Africa, but had struggled due to a "lack of proper unified instruments".
"We need real member state solidarity," she said, adding that a new asylum fund in the next multiannual financial framework will contribute to this issue and help maintain coherence.
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