EU: European Union ministers have agreed to set up a bureau to share information about asylum seekers and to lend each other experts and translators, moving a step closer to harmonising asylum policies.
EU countries have set themselves the goal of having a common asylum system by 2012.
"The most important thing . . . is to get away from the asylum lottery we have today," Tobias Billström, Sweden's minister for migrations and asylum policy, told a news conference at the end of a two-day EU ministers' meeting on asylum in Paris.
"At present, the most important thing is deciding where to hand in your application rather than what actual reasons you have for seeking asylum," Mr Billström said.
Asylum seekers are supposed to hand in their applications in the first EU country they reach, but in practice many do not.
Disparities between asylum policies cause many would-be refugees to travel illegally through Europe to reach a country where they have a better chance of being granted residency.
Improving co-operation between EU member states on immigration and asylum is one of the priorities of France's six-month presidency.
"We have taken an important step forward at this meeting," said France's immigration minister Brice Hortefeux. He said Malta had proposed introducing a co- ordinated resettlement system within the EU which would allow countries to transfer refugees to another member state.
This would allow small countries like Malta or Cyprus, where many would-be refugees enter the bloc, to be more generous in granting asylum, safe in the knowledge that they would not have to host every single successful applicant in the long term. - (Reuters)