European Union countries should develop a systematic approach to accepting asylum seekers, the senior U.N. executive for refugee issues said before a meeting Saturday with E.U. interior ministers. Ruud Lubbers, the U.N. high commissioner for refugee affairs, said the international body returned hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers to homelands in Africa, suggesting to the E.U. that accepting a "limited number" of them would be a positive development. E.U. countries have agreed in principle to create pilot projects to protect refugees from Third World countries, said Luc Frieden, Luxembourg's minister for justice and chairperson of the session. "These goals now must be backed by concrete measures," he said. Frieden said he hoped the meeting would develop proposals that the standing E.U. executive body, the Commission, could act on by the coming summer. Denmark's minister for integration, Bertel Haarder, said his country had experienced only marginal success with its programme to accept 500 selected refugees who did not meet national criteria for granting asylum. Although Denmark was committed to continuing the programme, Haarder said only 7 per cent of the special lot had found jobs after three years residence. Haarder also said the proposal to create refugee processing camps outside E.U. borders, in North Africa for example as proposed by German Interior Minister Otto Schily, was a dead issue. "No country would accept that, and I think Otto Schily sees this the same way," Haarder said.
