Finland’s interior minister, Kai Mykkänen, has called for a thorough overhaul of the European Union’s migrant and refugee policy. He announced his readiness to effectively abolish the current system of cross-border asylum applications and only allow the submission of applications at borders in special circumstances.
“What if we increased the number of quota refugees accepted to the EU tenfold and restricted cross-border applications to special cases?” he proposed in a blog on Puheenvuoro last week.
As reported by the Helsinki Times online, Mykkänen acknowledged that the proposal would represent a fundamental overhaul of the current asylum system but argued that such an overhaul is necessary because of the political uncertainty the issue has caused in Germany and Italy.
“We’ll see radical solutions whatever the case,” he said. “We’ll see them either in the form of every country acting alone and shutting down the Mediterranean without offering wider protection under the quota refugee scheme or in the form of us finding a joint European solution.”
The minister also said the current asylum system is no longer supported by a high number of countries on the external borders of the EU.
“What’s crucial is that the inflow of refugees wouldn’t become uncontrollable and we wouldn’t be faced with the problem of how to remove unsuccessful applicants.
“It may not be necessary to create a completely new mechanism. We already do have the refugee quota scheme,” added Mykkänen.
