Today's Date:

M. BARRY DELONGCHAMPS – In his statement of 25 September last year to the Council of Ministers, the Foreign Minister set out the main points of the reform of asylum desired by President Chirac which will be implemented on 1 January 2004.

The reform establishes a single procedure for processing applications for conventional asylum and what is known as "territorial asylum" [which incorporates residency for one year with the right to work and up to now has been dealt with by the Interior Ministry]. The Office français de protection des réfugiés et apatrides (OFPRA – French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons) becomes the sole authority responsible for processing asylum applications and deciding on their outcome. The Commission des Recours des Réfugiés (CRR – Refugee Appeals Commission) becomes the single monitoring jurisdiction.

The level of protection granted by France will be improved: sources of persecution will no longer be confined to States; the period for processing the applications will gradually be reduced to one month; finally, every applicant will be allowed to be accompanied by a third person.

OFPRA's modernization and efforts to step up productivity will be pursued in accordance with a contract of goals and means, concluded with its supervising authority. Implemented during the first half of 2003, this will prepare OFPRA for its new tasks, organize the clearing-up of outstanding cases and anticipate the future European standards.

To this end, the 2003 budgets of OFPRA and the CRR have been increased by 50%.

This funding will allow France, inter alia, to:

- Give top priority to processing outstanding cases. In a situation of continually-rising applications, up by 53% between 1999 and 2001 and then by a further 11.8% in 2002, the number of outstanding cases has in fact significantly increased; a plan to reduce the backlog, with a timetable for doing so, has been put into operation and will end the hold-ups in the processing of applications in the course of next year. 171 extra officials have been recruited to this end;

- Organize individual meetings with asylum applicants, rationalize, analyse and improve the reception structures by, in September 2003, relocating OFPRA on a single site, with the CRR occupying the site released by OFPRA and establishing on 1 January 2004 two devolved centres in Lyon and Marseille, housing both OFPRA and the various relevant government departments involved.

- Thereby to reduce the average time needed to process the applications from ten to two months by 31 December 2003, then eventually to one month.

By setting these deadlines and releasing the necessary resources, the government wanted to place OFPRA, the year it turns fifty, at the heart of the asylum machinery and to make this reform consistent with EU asylum policy.

As an indispensable complement to these measures, a new policy of escorting people to the border has been implemented. It is efficient, while scrupulously observing human rights; it's a move to step up European cooperation with the objective of pooling responsibility for dealing with a common problem and seeking concerted action with the countries of emigration.

I can also give you some details of the draft reform, the Bill to amend the Act of 25 July 1952 on the right of asylum. As you know, since it has also been the subject of a number of reports, the Bill's aim is to streamline the asylum procedures, as I said, by bringing them under a single authority, OFPRA, now to have jurisdiction in the area of conventional and territorial asylum. So this Act is a major innovation: the transfer to OFPRA of responsibility in the area of subsidiary protection, since territorial asylum becomes subsidiary protection.

The criteria for this subsidiary protection status, slightly different from those for the former territorial asylum protection, are inspired by article 15 of the proposed Council Directive on minimum standards for the conditions which nationals of third countries and stateless persons must fulfil to claim refugee status.

Subsidiary protection status is thus primarily designed for people who establish that they are threatened in their country by the death penalty or treatment contrary to article 3 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. It is also designed, in situations of armed conflict or civil war, for civilians under a serious, direct personal threat.

The previous judicial requirement that, in order to be granted refugee status under the terms of the first article of the Geneva Convention, the persecution had to be of State origin has been dropped. Now, once the conditions for the application of the Convention have been fulfilled, refugee status can be granted, even if the threat of persecution comes from non-State agents. This of course also applies in the case of subsidiary protection. When protection exists in the country of origin, it's normally ensured by the State authorities, but under certain circumstances, an authority other than the State, such as an international organization, may also be deemed a potential protector, hence the introduction into our legal system of the concept of "safe country of origin". OFPRA will also obviously be able to reject asylum applications from people with access to protection in a part of the territory of their country of origin and who could reasonably be sent back there.

France was until now the only, I would say the last or one of the last European countries not to make use of this concept which, unlike perhaps what could take place fifty or so years ago, reflects today's world and takes account of the diversity of the situations of vulnerability obtaining in the countries of origin.

There are provisions for organizations including the former OFPRA Council being replaced by a governing board. I also want to underline that the jurisdiction of the CRR will now be extended to monitoring all the OFPRA's decisions, including rejection. Modifying the jurisdiction of the Commission's sphere of responsibilities in this way also means somewhat broadening its composition.

As regards the new concept of safe country of origin, this has also been introduced into our legal system in line with articles 29-31 of the proposed Council Directive I was talking about just now, whose adoption has been agreed at the political level and which should formally come into force by the end of the year. A safe country of origin is a country respecting the principles of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law in which one can presume that persecution can't be perpetrated, authorized or left unpunished, with the government's objective being to produce at European level a common list of countries presumed safe which will be imposed on all European Union member States. It's important to point out that asylum applications submitted by nationals of safe countries of origin will neither be systematically rejected, nor considered inadmissible, since the guarantee of a detailed examination of each case will in fact be respected in accordance with our constitutional principles.

So those are the basic points of this reform.

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SAFE COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN/RIGHT OF APPEAL

M. BARRY DELONGCHAMPS – It isn't a matter of justifying the concept, but rather of the consequences of its introduction. There are two. The first is that it goes without saying that the nationals of safe countries of origin will see their applications determined more quickly because these aren't, a priori, as complex, i.e. don't present the same difficulties as other applications. But they will nevertheless be considered on a case-by-case basis. This is a general rule. The second concerns the period of time officially allowed for processing the applications; each must, as required by every State under the rule of law, be processed within a legally-prescribed period. Nationals of safe countries of origin will see their applications processed more quickly. This will perhaps be called a priority procedure. I don't know exactly what terms will in the end be used in the Act, it still has to be considered by Parliament, but the current thinking is indeed that faster procedures may apply in the case of nationals of safe countries of origin.

M. BARRY DELONGCHAMPS – Absolutely. Under French law, all applications, all decisions are subject to appeal.

NUMBER OF OUTSTANDING CASES

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M. VIAUX – As regards conventional asylum, in 2002 OFPRA received 52,000 applications. That's a rise of roughly 10% compared with the previous year (4,200 more cases). At the beginning of 2003, there was a backlog of around 35,000 cases. At the moment, we are trying gradually to reduce this and the goal is to have only two months of outstanding cases, i.e. around 8 to 9,000 by the end of the year.

M. BARRY DELONGCHAMPS – As regards territorial asylum, in 2002 we determined 20,000 cases. In 1998, the figure was 336. That gives you an idea of how the situation has changed. I haven't yet got the figures for 2003. What must be realized is that applications arrive every day in France's prefectures, in Paris and in the departments. So it's fairly difficult to give a figure today. One can simply assume that the numbers are rising steadily and fairly spectacularly roughly in line with increases seen over the past few years. As I said just now, we went from 300 to 8,000 applications, with 6,000 determinations, to 13,000 applications arriving in the prefectures with 9,900 determinations, then to 28,900 in 2001, and 28,300 in 2002. We can expect figures to be just as high if not higher this year. The trend is now a relatively established one.

Asylum applications at border points are also fairly high. In 2001, the Foreign Ministry determined 7,000 cases and in 2002, 6,600. (...)./.