Aproximación prospectiva a la evolución del cuidado informal en Euskadi

So far, the thesis discussed the provision of reception conditions to asylum seekers in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom from 1999 until 2015. While this thesis was written events occurred that in the long-run will have a crucial impact on the approach that Member States will take in terms of asylum matters and the provision of reception conditions to asylum seekers.

In 2015, the European refugee and migrant crisis began, when increasing numbers of migrants and asylum seekers travelled to the European Union, in most cases via the Mediterranean Sea, to seek asylum. Most of these people that crossed the Mediterranean Sea in the time from January 2015 and March 2016, according to the

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United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, were from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. With growing illegal ship crossings of the Mediterranean Sea, the number of tragic shipwrecks and deaths at sea also increased to record levels by the summer of 2015, when five boats carrying around 2,000 migrants and asylum seekers sank in the Mediterranean Sea, which lead to the death of around 1,200 people (UNHCR,2015).

The increased number of people fleeing across the Mediterranean Sea to seek shelter in Europe took place in a time of ongoing conflict and refugee crises taking place in a variety of African and Asian countries, which led to a dramatic increase in the number of forcibly displaced persons worldwide hitting the 60 million mark, which constitutes the highest level since World War II (UNHCR, 2015). This high number of sea crossings meant a high influx of migrants and asylum seekers into the EU Member States bordering the Mediterranean Sea, and in this respect Italy received the highest amount of sea arrivals from Libya in 2014. As a response to the growing number of sea arrivals, the Italian government asked for further funding for the Operation Mare Nostrum, which as an operation started by the Italian government in 2013 in order to tackle the increased immigration to the European Union and to prevent further ship wreckages such as Lampedusa. However, the other EU Member States dismissed the idea of further funding of the Operation Mare Nostrum arguing that the required funding would exceed the EU budget. As the Operation Mare Nostrum was suspended, the EU introduced the Operation Triton, which is a border security operation supervised by Frontex. Even though Operation Triton aimed at minimizing the deaths at sea, the number of migrants drowning while crossing the Mediterranean Sea in order to reach Europe has significantly increased culminating in April 2015 with various Libyan migrant shipwrecks resulting in 1,000 deaths just in that month. The International Organisation for Migration criticised Operation Triton for the fact that the deaths at sea have risen nine times after Operation Mare Nostrum ceased its operation. Following on from the Libya migrant shipwreck, the EU and the governments of the Member States came together in order to increase the budget available to Operation Triton to tackle the increasing migrant crisis. This step however was strongly criticised by Amnesty International, which is arguing that the response taken by the European Union to the 2015 migrant crisis and the increasing incidents in the Mediterranean Sea is rather “a face-saving not a life-saving operation” (Amnesty International, 2015).

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But not only Italy suffered a high influx of migrants in a short period of time. In the beginning of 2015 Greece overtook Italy as the first EU country of arrival. In summer 2015, a shift started to happen with migrants and refugees travelling through south- eastern Europe in order to reach northern European countries, such as Germany and Sweden. Since April 2015, the European Union has increasingly struggled to cope with the migrant and refugee crisis, increasing funding for border patrol operations in the Mediterranean, preparing approaches to fight migrant smuggling and human trafficking, launching Operation Sophia and proposing a new quota system to relocate and resettle asylum seekers among EU Member States and minimize the burden on EU Member States on the outer borders of the European Union.

According to Eurostat, EU Member States have received 1.2 million asylum applications in 2015, a number more than double than that of the previous year. In this respect, Germany, Hungary, Sweden, and Austria received around two-thirds of the EU's asylum applications in 2015, with Hungary, Sweden, and Austria being the top recipients of asylum applications per capita (Eurostat, 2015).

In summer 2015, at a meeting of the European Council, the Member States of the European Union agreed to relocate migrants from Greece and Italy, in order to disperse the burden of the migrant crisis more equally across all of the EU Member States. In order to deal with the migrants and asylum seekers present in the EU it was agreed though that this relocation scheme would be on a voluntary basis and there would be no mandatory quotas imposed on the Member States pointing out how many migrants they actually have to take in (BBC News, 2015). Besides this agreement at the European Council, several European countries started to build fences and barriers along their borders in order to prevent migrants from crossing into the European Union, in this respect Hungary closed off its border with Serbia, while Bulgaria erected a fence along its border with Turkey. As a result of the growing incentives of shutting of the EU borders, the Hungarian government closed off the railway station in Budapest in order to stop migrants to travel through the European Union. The Hungarian government justified this action by claiming, that they just attempt at enforcing provisions set out in the Dublin Regulation, which states that asylum seekers should lodge their asylum application in the first EU Member State that they actually enter. But many of the migrants that were at the railway station wanted to make their way to Germany and claim asylum there. As Hungary closed off any possibilities for

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migrants and asylum seekers to get to Germany or the rest of the EU Member States, the Austrian chancellor issued a statement saying that Austria and Germany have agreed to let migrants and asylum seekers cross their borders. Following on from this, the Hungarian government stop all of the attempts to register asylum seekers and migrants, and instead organised buses to bring them to the border, so that they can enter Austria and Germany.

On the 5th of September 2015, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, announced that there are “no limits on the number of asylum seekers” that Germany is willing to take in. In addition to this, Merkel argue that “as a strong, economically healthy country we have the strength to do what is necessary” (Irish Independent, 2015). This comment by Angela Merkel led to hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers attempting to travel to Germany and lodge their asylum application. As an example, migrants broke through police barriers on Hungary’s border with Serbia chanting “Germany, Germany” and making their way to Budapest to be transported to Germany (BBC News, 2015). Migrants that tried to get from Germany to Sweden by train, were stopped on the 9th of September by border authorities and police in Denmark. Many of the migrants refused to leave the trains and they started walking along the motorway to make their way to Sweden. In response to this, the Danish police had to close off the motorway and immediately suspend all rail connections with Germany. The main rationale for the migrants to get to Sweden, was the fact that Sweden promised to issue residence permits to all Syrian asylum seekers (BBC News, 2015).

Although the German government proclaimed that they are able to deal with the increasing number of asylum seekers and migrants, the government had to introduce temporary controls on its border with Austria in order to tackle the inflow of asylum seekers and migrants. In pursuance of this, all trains between Austria and Germany were suspended temporarily. Sigmar Gabriel, the German vice-chancellor announced that Germany was “at the limit of its capabilities” (BBC News, 2015).

On the 22nd of September, the Justice and Home Affairs Council, consisting out of the EU interior ministers attended a meeting and decided with a majority vote to relocate 120,000 refugees across the territory of the European Union. However, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic voted against the relocation scheme, which intended at distributing the refugees over a period of two years from Italy and Greece. The scheme is restricted to refugees in need of international protection specifically and