Luxembourg Minister of Immigration and Asylum Jean Asselborn has announced his position on the press release of the Refugees Collective of 22 March 2018.
The collective agreement for refugees namely concerns the retention of families, an emergency shelter structure in Kirchberg and transfer time.
Firstly, the maximum retention period for families with children has been increased from 72 hours to 7 days by the law of 8 March 2017. Referring to the "Returns Directive", which is the cornerstone of the return mechanism within the European Union, the European Commission had criticised that the 72 hours of detention did not guarantee a sufficient effectiveness in terms of returns.
Internally, this legislative amendment has also proven unavoidable in view of a necessary improvement in the organisation and conduct of forced returns. It also happens that problems with "traffic and landing rights" arise just before a forced charter return mission. The retention time of 72 hours is therefore considered too short to solve these problems.
Note also that in practice, the retention period for families with children is well below the maximum of 7 days. Since the law came into effect in March 2017, it has only increased slightly to 3.46 days. Between March and December 2017, 94 family members stayed at the Detention Centre for removal. In 2018, no family member has stayed at the Centre yet.
In 2016, out of 569 returns, only 113 people were forcibly removed and 456 people were returned voluntarily. In 2017, out of 514 returns, 154 people were forcibly removed and 360 left voluntarily.
Regarding the Emergency Shelter Structure Kirchberg (SHUK), this structure hosts international protection applicants whose fingerprints are already registered in the Eurodac system. SHUK is considered an alternative to detention centres and not an alternative to reception. Luxembourg does not constitute the state where the first asylum application was lodged, or who is responsible for the processing of the asylum claim or the return of the rejected persons.
While the SHUK was set up to facilitate the transfer operations of the police chief, by preventing the latter from having to go to several homes to organise a transfer, it also has a symbolic character to combat the secondary movements. The purpose of the structure is precisely to prevent people falling under the scope of Dublin from acclimating to Luxembourg. It also aims to limit new arrivals of secondary movements while promoting voluntary transfers to responsible countries.
Since the opening of the SHUK, the average presence in days of the assigned persons amounts to 30 days. Few cases have been assigned beyond six months. This is due in particular to the response time of other Member States and the time of organisation of transfers. In addition, many people disappear to prevent their transfer, or even return voluntarily to the Member State responsible. The assignments are renewable several times without exceeding the duration of 12 months.
Finally, regarding transfer time, a period of 15 days from the notification of the transfer decision is systematically respected before proceeding with a Dublin transfer. In parallel, each person concerned may lodge an application for interim measures before the administrative courts. Finally, upon the filing of an application for interim relief, the transfer is systematically suspended pending the interim order.
