The French administration was caught red-handed: They will have admit to the real figures of immigration, because according to information from CheckNews, Eurostat recently contacted the French authorities to inform them that, for several years, they had been providing the European statistical office with distorted data on the number of people filing a request for asylum in France.
The breach relates to the case of “dublinés”, that is to say applicants under the Dublin procedure, ie those seeking asylum in a European country after having entered the EU through another. Each month, there are thousands of people who are included in the total number of asylum applications lodged in France.
“It is contrary to Eurostat definitions. The directives explicitly ask the countries to count the candidates subjected to the Dublin procedure ”, the press service of the European entity told CheckNews. It added: “We had been informed of this problem also in the past, in 2009. However, we did not know that this question still arose in France today.” Clearly,the French administration has known about the problem for ten years, but has still not solved it.
The latter, however, denied having attempted to downplay these figures. “France had made the choice several years ago to transmit OFPRA data [which do not include ‘dubliné’, editor’s note] because the elements of data collection at the prefecture of the registration of requests did not allow to respond to all of Eurostat’s criteria,” citing data collection at the DGEF, the Directorate General for Foreigners in France.
For CheckNews, a specialist confirmed “the deplorable state of the French statistical apparatus ” but also noted that the practice “also reflects the French vision according to which the ‘dublines’ are not asylum seekers”.
Could France face sanctions for this? Not according to Eurostat, obviously not worried that the omission has been going on since 2009.
“France told us that it was working on the issue and that it would be able to correct this problem by the middle of the year in progress. (…) Because France has declared that it would correct the data, it is not necessary to impose sanctions “, explained the European statistical office, adding that “it is only if France does not respect the timetable indicated that it will be subject to the standard compliance monitoring exercise, which is the standard procedure for ensuring compliance with legal requirements”.
In addition, on Tuesday, the Interior Ministry revealed that the number of asylum applications lodged in France in 2019 amounted to 132 614, an increase of 7,3 percent.
Beauvau additionally mentions an “anomaly” concerning Georgian and Albanian migrants, third and fourth in terms of asylum requests when their countries of origin are considered to be “safe”.
