JRS Report: Can EU’s asylum system cope with expansion of its borders?

(Vatican Radio) A new report just issued by the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) says Croatia’s accession to the EU on July 1^st will severely test how the EU asylum system can cope with the expansion of its borders. The author of the report is Benedict Coleridge from JRS Europe who visited reception centres for migrants in Croatia and Macedonia and saw the “abysmal" state of some of these facilities. He spoke to Vatican Radio’s Susy Hodges.

Listen to the extended interview with Benedict Coleridge:

Entitled From Back Door to Front Door: Forced migration routes through Macedonia to Croatia, the JRS report written by Coleridge argues that the EU has to invest resources now to prevent the Croatian asylum system from collapsing due to a 50 percent increase in asylum seekers there. He says there needs “to be a real focus on the Balkans as a transit route to the EU” due to this doubling of asylum seekers in Croatia in the space of one year. In Coleridge’s view, Croatia’s asylum system is already strained to the limit and it simply doesn’t “have the capacity to effect “swift and fully compliant procedures” according to EU norms.

Coleridge said the conditions in reception centres he visited in neighbouring Macedonia were “dire” with “filthy” living conditions.. He describes one centre he visited which had “rubbish piled high in the corridors, dog faeces staining the walls” and small children living alongside men who were total strangers. Not surprisingly, he added, these conditions make it “extremely difficult for a person to endure.” Coleridge stresses that poor conditions in Macedonia will impact its regional neighbours and the Balkans should be considered as an integrated whole.

Asked about where these forced migrants have come from and what caused them to flee their homelands, Coleridge notes that typically they have all experienced “intense trauma and violence,” adding “many of them are torture victims.” He said forced migrants from Nigeria and Afghanistan were the predominant national groups” in Croatia and Macedonia but there was a “wide diversity” of ethnic groups.