Tulip Siddiq – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tulip Siddiq on 2016-02-02.
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what (a) funding and (b) personnel support was provided by her Department to the European Asylum Support Office in each year since 2009-10; how many (i) missions and (ii) expert days the UK provided for that office in each such year; and what her plans are for (A) funding, (B) personnel support, (C) missions and (D) expert days provided in 2015-16.
James Brokenshire
The European Asylum Support Office (EASO) is funded directly by the EU budget.
The first EASO operating plan to support the reconstruction of the Greek asylum system was signed on 1 April 2011. Support from Member States to support missions commenced after this date. We do not hold a precise record of personnel support provided to EASO from this period but in the last three years EASO advises that the UK has contributed over 1,000 expert working days in deployments to Greece, Italy, Bulgaria and Cyprus.
During the current financial year the UK has provided EASO with 11 asylum experts and an interpreter in over 16 separate deployments. This includes one UK expert on long term deployment to Greece to assist Greek authorities with European funding matters and an expert to support the Italian country of origin information unit for six months followed by one week a month until March 2016.
So far we have provided EASO with four experts to assist with their coordination and operation of ‘hotspots’ in Greece and Italy. These measures are due to continue until the end of 2017 and we envisage that we will continue to contribute for this duration. On 28th January the Government announced further initiatives to assist unaccompanied children in the region which include further resources to EASO to help identify and register children at risk on first arrival in the EU in “hotspots” such as Greece and Italy. We are working closely with EASO to monitor the situation and provide expertise as necessary.
Deployment lengths vary according the task but typically personnel providing support to a hotspot mission will be released for a month’s duration.
