Nationals of eight third countries, including here five Western Balkan countries, will have to prove more robustly and clearly that their country of origin is not specifically safe for them, in order to be able to obtain international protection in the future in Belgium.
On July 10, the Belgian Official Journal published a revised list of non-EU countries considered safe countries of origin, including Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of North Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, India and Georgia. SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.
According to the country’s General Commission for Refugees and Stateless Persons (CGRA), classifying a country of origin as safe can have specific consequences on the procedure that applicants for international protection must follow with this office and on the appeal procedure. to the Aliens Law Litigation Council.
“A country of origin can be considered safe if there is generally and consistently no persecution or risk of serious harm. In order to determine whether a country is safe, the legal situation, law enforcement and general political conditions of the country are taken into account.“, he underlines in a press release.
The decision on the new list was taken on April 7, but was only published in the Official Journal last Monday. The list is reviewed every year, and these same countries have been included since 2020.
According to the European Migration Network, more than 100,000 people requested protection last year in Belgium alone, of which more than 63,000 were Ukrainians with temporary protection status.
More than 36,000 additional people requested international protection, 7,000 fewer than in 2015, but an increase compared to other recent years. In the same year 2022, 32,141 were first applications, 4,652 subsequent applications and a further 71 people arrived in Belgium through resettlement.
While 3,853 people declared themselves to be unaccompanied minors at the time of their request for international protection, after examination by the guardianship service, only 2,272 were actually identified as unaccompanied minors. 93.8 percent of them were boys and the vast majority were Afghan nationals.
The main countries of origin of applicants for international protection in Belgium remain Afghanistan, Syria, Palestine, Burundi and Eritrea.