As the EU prepares to improve reception conditions and introduce clearer rules for asylum seekers, EuroparlTV investigates the situation today in Belgium.
Belgium is a preferred destination for asylum seekers. In 2011 it dealt with nearly 10% of all the requests in Europe. The EU is to legislate on more humane reception conditions across the 27. Better detention conditions, more flexibility for minors, and quicker access to the labour market. I believe that from today we can conceive the Europe we all wish for, which is better in terms of asylum and freedoms. Dozens wait at the Belgian Office for Foreigners every day. Their aim is to obtain the status of political refugee and proper documents to enter the labour market. What would you like to do in Belgium? I want to be like any normal person in the world. I want to live my life normally, like anyone. I'm still young, so I want to work. I want to learn. I want to make the best of my life. Last year, 5,000 applications were accepted out of 25,000. Many asylum seekers stopped at the airport or at borders end up here, at the closed centre a few hundred metres from Brussels Airport. The welcome is frosty - security gates, surveillance cameras and wire fencing. This is the daily life of Sima, a young 21-year-old Iranian activist, who fled from the Islamic republic. What I wrote was about the... What do they call it? Human rights violations for my people. So you asked for the protection of Belgium? Yeah, exactly. There's some stuff I cannot talk about, because I have my family back home. I'm afraid for their safety. So this is it. I have really great problems. My family back there isn't allowed to leave the country. So it's heartbreaking because you cannot do anything. I'm just stuck here. Do you feel like you're in prison? You get that feeling because they call it a closed centre. They don't call it a prison. But, yeah, you get that feeling. It gets hard. Like Sima, the other 90 residents in this closed centre are waiting for their fate to be decided - refugee status or expulsion. Do you think the majority of asylum seekers here are just economic refugees, or political refugees? What is your opinion? I think most of them, yes, because I know the decisions that are given and I trust the Commissioner General is doing a good job. So if they give a negative decision, it's because they made a good investigation. So when I see the figures, I have to conclude that most of them are not real political refugees. This influx of refugees is a problem for Belgium. In 2011 it was condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for sending an Afghan back to Greece, a country whose reception conditions are inhumane, the court said. Another problem is that of unaccompanied minors. Unlike Usmanzai, a 17-year-old Afghan, many of them don't find refuge in a centre for asylum seekers. First I went to Iran, from Iran to Turkey, from Turkey to Greece, from Greece to Italy, from Italy to France, and then here. Why Belgium? I didn't know it was Belgium. When I came in I thought they would give me something to eat. And when I came in, they just took my fingerprints and then they sent me to Steenokkerzeel. Usmanzai spent nearly two months in another closed centre in Belgium before coming here. He now goes to school every day and tries to forget the death of his father, killed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. My papa was the best. When he died our life was finished. Everything has changed. Belgium has been condemned several times for holding minors in closed centres. Lack of space is the main reason. We can still improve our external borders and we also have to work together with the more central Member States. In other words, there's a problem of real solidarity between Member States. Actually we see huge differences in how asylum systems operate throughout the European Union. Everybody knows about Greece which has a dysfunctional... Actually it has an asylum system that doesn't work. People are left on the streets, they have no access to any asylum procedures. For Usmanzai, the question no longer arises. If his asylum application is refused, he'll return to Afghanistan, with the risks that entails.
EuroparlTV video ID: a2792ea4-3013-4cd2-b430-a0f2008d3401
