The Council looked, on the basis of a presidency paper, at the state-of-play of negotiations on the various legislative proposals concerning the Common European Asylum System (CEAS).
Ministers instructed the Council preparatory bodies to continue their work to reach an agreement at Council level and with the European Parliament as soon as possible.
The situation on the various files can be described as follows:
- The qualification directive providing for better, clearer and more harmonised standards for identifying persons in need of international protection was adopted in November 2011 and entered into force in January 2012.
- The asylum procedures (current proposal being examined) and reception conditions directives: revised proposals were tabled by the Commission on 1 June 2011. Significant progress has been made on the two instruments, in particular on the reception conditions directives where negotiations with the European Parliament are expected to start soon. The main outstanding issues here concern the grounds for detention and access to labour market for asylum applicants.
- The Dublin II regulation establishes the procedures for determining the member state responsible for examining an application for international protection. Further progress has been made on almost all aspects, in particular concerning a proposal to introduce a mechanism for early warning, preparedness and crisis management.
- The Eurodac regulation: discussions on amendments to the rules regulating this fingerprint database are on hold pending a revised Commission proposal. Member states have requested additional provisions which would allow their law enforcement authorities to access the Eurodac central database under strict conditions on data protection for the purposes of fighting terrorism and organised crime.
Two other agreements related to the CEAS have been achieved so far. They concern the long term residence directive and the creation of the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) which started operations in spring 2011.
In addition, the Council took a decision without discussion which establishes common EU resettlement priorities for 2013 as well as new rules on EU funding for resettlement activities carried out by member states.