mr president we heard earlier from ms dührkop dührkop in terms of the european refugee fund and the changes proposed in that in order to support the setting-up of the european asylum support office and i am the rapporteur for the regulation which deals with that particular proposal the asylum support office
the idea is that this is an office which is there to support member states in improving we would say the quality we know some member states have a difficulty with that concept of improving the quality of delivery of decision-making on asylum requests but also this office aims to assist in developing consistency across member states as well as supporting those countries which find themselves under particular pressure at various times either through continuing mixed flows of people coming to those countries or for other reasons
we have heard already from some about the problems caused by the lack of consistency between member states in their decision-making on asylum claims and this has certainly been part of the background to the difficulties which are there with the dublin system
but what we want to see is this improvement and part of what this is about is providing training
we are advocating that unhcr guidelines should be involved in that maybe the starting point even if they do not lead and that member states should be able to draw on experience that the office should be able to deliver joint training or indeed specific training to member states as the need arises drawing on expertise from within the member states themselves but also from the unhcr and indeed relevant ngos
we thought at one point we might have got a first-reading agreement on this but time and indeed our desire to pull together the package of measures looking at the european common asylum system mean that we have not got that far
but we have had considerable discussions between the shadows and also with the council on this and this explains certain of the amendments before us at the moment certain of which are technical in terms of bringing in things which are normally in the regulation which were omitted in the original proposal
for parliament the role of unhcr within this asylum support office is absolutely crucial
we also wish to see ngos closely associated with the office in the consultative forum and indeed involved in delivering training or receiving it where they are part of the delivery of an asylum system in a member state
however the role of parliament is proving a little more difficult to find agreement on with the council
we are looking at parliament being involved quite closely in the appointment of the director looking at the fundamental rights agency perhaps as our model on that
the other sticking point is as jeanine has indicated in her introduction on the dublin system the question about how much we can actually look at member states cooperating as it were from a starting point which makes that obligatory rather than voluntary
so those are certainly the two big issues at the moment
we are pleased that the council has indicated it could well accept our amendments concerning training itself and indeed bringing in external expertise for example in terms of interpretation where necessary
so we think we are moving forward on this but we will see when we get maybe an indication from the commission about how we are going to increase cooperation between member states just how far we will be able to get with this proposal
