Fortress Europe?

Hassan Nour Ali is from Somalia. Currently, he's in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Berlin. He's in his late fourties and has been on a real odyssey to get where he is now. From Somalia, he went to Libya via Sudan, then travelled in a tiny dingy together with 29 other refugees across the Mediterranean. It took them a full two days to reach the small EU island state of Malta. But what waited for Ali was not freedom or a better life – but a refugee camp that felt like a prison to him.

"In June 2008 I arrived in Malta; but then spent 1.5 years in prison," he recollects. "I was treated like a criminal. I was in horrible pain but there was no medical treatment, no pills." He says that if he complained about the poor conditions, he would just be punished by the police officers. "In one case they took away my clothes and tied me naked to a pole and I had to stand an entire day out in the cold."

Hassan had fled his home country after his family had been the victim of a horrible attack by Islamist radicals. "Things are really bad in Somalia – my wife is dead, my three children are dead, my money and my house are gone and I am all alone." Even his father was killed by the extremists, he said.

'Rather dead than back to Malta'

From Malta he went to the Netherlands, then he tried to apply for asylum in Germany. But here he's only temporarily permitted to stay, the German authorities can send him back to Malta anytime.

"In January it happened for the first time that a police officer came to my room, telling me that on that very evening, I'd be put on a plane to Malta. I asked him why but he didn't answer. I told him that I would rather kill myself than go back to Malta."

Hassan wants to live in Germany. But that would be in violation of the so-called Dublin II regulation. Some nine years ago in the Irish capital, the EU agreed on an asylum pact which says that any refugee has to apply for asylum in the first country he enters in the EU. In Hassan's case this was Malta.

Again and again, asylum seekers tell stories like Hassan's about the conditions in their countries of arrival. Lothar Steiner of a German NGO campaigning against Dublin II. "For us, the regulation is another step in Europe's policy of making difficult to enter the bloc."

In fact, not all EU states agree with Dublin II and Brussels has long understood that the regulation needs to be reformed. Germany, however, is insisting on refugees having to apply for asylum in their country of entry while other member states are open to changing that rule.

Minimal standards

The EU commission, in the meantime, is pushing for higher minimal standards in the refugee camps in countries like Malta, Italy or Greece. The long-term goal is a common asylum policy which, though contributions from all member states, would ensure better conditions in camps in the south of Europe.

The European Court of Justice as well as Germany's constitutional court have repeatedly ruled against the transfer of refugees from one EU member to another. Those rulings have only added fuel to the ongoing debate about the Dublin II regulation itself.

Germany for instance has ruled that until 2013, no refugees are to be sent back to Greece; the reason is the poor conditions of the Greek refugee camps. But the ruling does not apply to other southern European countries that often have similarly poor track records when it comes to treating asylum seekers. And Berlin's conservative government has no plans to change Dublin II – the decision on Greece is to remain an exception rather than becoming the rule.

On Thursday, the EU parliament gave the green light to improve the Dublin II regulation in order to facilitate the reception of asylum seekers. Refugees from Congo, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon or Sudan are to get privileged treatment when applying for asylum. Critics say that the new concept is not going far enough.

Pressure on the EU

Activists continue to ask for Dublin II to be scrapped entirely. They say the current system inevitably leads to the southern and eastern Eurpean countries having to bear the brunt of the flow of refugees: Poland, Spain, Italy, Greece and Malta. Authorities in those countries are often overstretched and the conditions in the camps are catastrophic, says Steiner. "People who want to apply for asylum in Germany or Europe should not be treated differently than anyone else living here. We want them to be able to move around freely and put in their application in the country of their choice."

Hassan Nour Ali has all his hopes pinned on his application going through in Germany. "When I sleep, I have nightmares about Malta," he says. "If I have to back there, I will die."

Author: Richard Fuchs / ai
Editor: Iveta Ondruskova