After five years of intense discussions, on 29 June the Portuguese Presidency reached a provisional agreement with the European Parliament on the proposal for a Regulation establishing the European Asylum Agency.
The agreement reached allows for the transformation of the current European Asylum Support Office (EASO) into an agency responsible for providing enhanced assistance to Member States and for contributing to greater convergence in the assessment of applications for international protection.
The new mandate will also enable the agency to strengthen its support for cooperation between Member States and third countries, thus also contributing to the EU overall external dimension.
This
excellent result is largely due to the negotiating performance and technical
work carried out by JHA Counsellor Mário Magalhães Pedro, particularly in the
final stretch, having prepared the ground so that a political opportunity could
be turned into an operational result.
You can follow the Press conference by Elena Yoncheva, Rapporteur on on the EU Asylum Agency, here