An overdue upgrade to the existing migration support office of the European Union was negotiated Tuesday for the creation of a new asylum agency.
EASO – the European Asylum Support Office – was created in 2011 and aims to coordinate cooperation between EU countries in asylum matters.
The European Commission had put forward a proposal for an asylum agency in 2016 as part of a package to overhaul the bloc's asylum system. However, with EU countries at loggerheads over various aspects on how to update the system, the creation of such an asylum agency was left in limbo.
Tuesday's deal came after the commission presented a new proposal last year.
The deal foresees turning the office into an independent agency, boosting its financial resources and number of staff.
"We will have bigger staff, bigger possibility," Elena Yoncheva, the parliament's rapporteur on the asylum agency, told reporters.
The EU institutions hope that, with the upgrade to the newly christened European Union Agency for Asylum, the bloc's asylum system would be made more efficient. For example, a new pool of 500 experts could be sent out to support member states under pressure. That help could come in the form of interpreters or case handlers.
The agency would be able to help governments with relocations and transfers of migrants within the EU.
The deal still needs to be officially accepted by the parliament and EU countries.
The European Commission welcomed the agreement.
"This will help make our asylum procedures in the EU faster and more uniform," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.
The bloc's asylum system has faced intense criticism for being too slow, leaving migrants who have requested EU protection in limbo – sometimes for years.
With arrival numbers having dropped significantly during the past year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some of the case backlog could be cleared, according to EASO's annual report, which the organization presented on Tuesday.
But the EU's resettlement program – under which EU countries take in migrants vetted by the U.N. refugee office – saw a marked decrease of 58% fewer refugees being transferred to Europe, according to EASO's report.
As travel to the EU was severely restricted last year, 2020 also saw the lowest number of migrants seeking international protection in the EU (plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland) since 2013: 485,000 asylum applications were lodged, compared to 716,000 in 2019.
