Albanian authorities have repeated calls on the country’s citizens not to apply for asylum in Western Europe because they will not qualify and will hurt the visa-free movement of all Albanians with their unfounded applications
TIRANA, March 24 – Albanian authorities are calling on the country’s citizens not to go to western European countries to seek asylum, as they will automatically be denied, deported home and given multi-year travel bans by EU countries.
Interior Minister Saimir Tahiri issued the latest call after meeting with British State Minister John Taylor, who accompanied a planeload full of Albanians that London was deporting back home after they had applied for asylum there and failed in their requests.
Tahiri said authorities were “determined to fight human trafficking and any efforts for illegal immigration.”
Albanians and others in the region have been able to travel without visas to much of the EU, excluding Britain and Ireland, since 2010.
Since then there have been complaints from some large and wealthy Western European countries that have seen thousands of Serbs, Macedonians, Bosnians and Albanians ask for asylum in their countries.
Authorities have been telling Albanians the country is on the safe map for Europe, and their claims would be automatically denied.
German Ambassador to Tirana Helmut Hoffmann also said at a meeting with Interior Ministry officials that Albanians should avoid seeking asylum in his country. He said that only one out of 100 people that has applied has been able to get asylum in Germany.
In general, EU countries have become very stringent with asylum applications. France also announced it rejected 83 percent of asylum applications last year — a far higher rate than other European countries. In 2013, France looked at 61,455 asylum cases but only granted protection to 10,470 of those seeking sanctuary in the country, according to new figures EU’s Eurostat agency released on Monday. That’s an acceptance rate of just 17 percent, which compares unfavorably with the Europe –wide average of 34 percent for first-instance decisions, which asylum seekers have the chance of overturning on appeal.
In Germany, where 76,165 decisions were made on asylum last year, the percentage of those accepted from all countries stood at 26.5 percent and in the UK 38 percent of 22,340 asylum cases were granted protection. Italy gave protection in 64 percent of cases and Sweden granted some kind of asylum in 54 percent of the 45,000 cases ruled on.
Figures show that most of those seeking asylum in France come from Kosovo, the Democratic Republic of Congo and then Albania, whereas other countries like Germany count Syrians among the top three applicants. In Britain, Pakistanis made up the largest number of applicants followed by Iranians and then Sri Lankans.
Eurostat figures revealed that across Europe as a whole there were almost 435,000 asylum applications registered last year, a dramatic increase on the 335,000 requests made in the previous year. Of the applications made last year 127,000 were to Germany, (29 percent) 65,000 to France (15 percent), 54,000 to Sweden and 30,000 to the UK (7 percent).
