Caritas Europe has intervened on the question of the 80 political asylum-seekers from Kurdistan and Afghanistan who sought refuge for several days in the church of Saints Peter and Paul in Calais, in France: the European Church-run aid organization expresses solidarity with the “refugees in the churches” and asks for changes to the Dublin Convention that regulates the question. First, Caritas Europe urges that “only the States where the asylum request is made, and not the countries of first contact, should be responsible for receiving and deciding on asylum applications. In this way the procedures would be shorter and the responsibilities more evenly distributed”. Second, Caritas Europe recommends that “the requests of persons belonging to the same family should be examined in the same country”. Third, Caritas Europe complains about the lack of harmonization, at the European level, between the various legislations on right of asylum: in some countries applicants receive basic social assistance, in others they are reduced to the minimum. There are an estimated 335,400 applicants seeking political asylum in Europe today.
