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Asylum experts in Europe

30/06/2014
For three years now, Belgium has shared its expertise on asylum with European countries that appeal for assistance from EASO.

The European Asylum Support Office (EASO), which is located in Malta, has been operational in all the European Union Member States since 2011. The role of this agency is to offer specific support to countries that come under pressure regarding asylum. To this point, five Member States have received assistance from EASO support teams: Luxembourg, Sweden, Italy, Bulgaria and Greece. Cyprus will be added to this list as the sixth country and will receive support for a year.Among other forms of assistance, to this point EASO has developed approximately 15 training modules for asylum actors in the EU. In addition, they have produced many useful publications, such as reports on the current state of affairs regarding asylum in Europe and reports about the situation in the countries of origin. But one of the core activities of EASO consists in organising support or emergency missions in European countries that ask for assistance. In order to do so, EASO looks for experts to participate in these missions.Belgium is one of the countries that have sent a large number of asylum experts on the EASO support missions, sending 18 persons over a three-year period. These experts are staff from the Belgian asylum agencies and they offer their assistance to countries such as Italy, Bulgaria and Greece. For instance, Fedasil is currently participating actively on developing training modules for the agencies that are responsible for receiving asylum seekers in Greece.