French MPs vote to speed up asylum process

France is to speed up its handling of asylum-seekers, two years after being criticised by the European Commission for the time it takes to consider cases. The National Assembly voted to reform asylum law by 324-188 on Tuesday.

A volunteer for the Médecins du Monde NGO meets Albanian asylum-seekers in Lyon last October RFI/Matthieu Millecamps

France’s administration takes an average of two years to deal with asylum requests from people claiming to flee repressive regimes and intolerance abroad but on Tuesday French MPs approved a project to reform the process and streamline procedures.

The goal is to bring the length of process down from two years to nine months.

Socialists, Left Radicals and the centrist UDI voted for the resolution, while the mainstream right UMP and far-right Front National (FN) voted against.

While remaining “viscerally attached to this fundamental principle”, the UMP opposed the reform because the asylum procedure has become a “machine for the legalisation of illegal immigrants”, Eric Ciotti MP declared during the debate.

The Greens, Communists and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Left Party abstained on the grounds that the changes do not go far enough, especially opposing an amendment that prevented asylum-seekers having access to employment for the first nine months of their stay.

The bill now has to go to the upper house, the Senate, where the right has a majority.

The new process will include an accelerated three-month option for those who either present completely false documents or, on the other hand, have unanswerable cases, such as Syrians fleeing the civil war in their country at present.

The bill also includes goals of improving the situation of those waiting for a response - France has inadequate space to hold asylum-seekers and the government proposes an additional 5,000 places.

It also proposes to decide where asylum-seekers will be sent while their case is handled, in the hope of reducing the present concentration in Paris and Lyon.

According to the EUs Eurostat agency, France has a particularly low rate of acceptance for asylum-seekers - 17 per cent, as compared to the European average of 34 per cent.

France receives the third-largest number of asylum-seekers in Europe after Germany and Sweden.

With a series of crises and wars around the world the number of applications has doubled since 2007, reaching 66,000 in 2013 but falling to 63,000 this year.

The reform will make no difference the 600-million-euro cost of the system.

Many NGOs consider the funding inadequate.

“We have to have the means to receive people with dignity and we don’t have them,” Pierre Henry of France Terre d’Asile told RFI. “In reality the budget is down for accommodation, shelter and accompaniment. I don’t doubt that the government and the interior minister have principles but politics is a matter both of having principles and provide the means to put these principles into practise and a large part of the latter are missing.”