 In early 2016, when he was appointed Executive Director of the EASO, he's in fact the second Executive Director since the office was set up. Mr Carrero worked in senior management positions in the EU, in a number of agencies in Spain, Germany, Greece, United Kingdom, Poland and France, so he's in a way a product of EU agencies and has vast experience. He also previously worked in the EASO before he was appointed as Executive Director as a senior management role there. So Jose, who I've known for a number of years, I would consider a good friend of mine, will outline in the presentation today how the European Asylum Support Office is playing a key role in the implementation of the Common European Asylum System and how it's committed to translating the core values of the Common European Asylum System, which are equity and fairness, into practice, and so as to ensure that all of the Member States deal with individual asylum cases in a coherent manner. He will also analyse the evolving role of the European Asylum Support Office, explaining why and how the agency should represent a key pillar in the development and implementation of the Common Asylum System and he will also focus on the migration crisis and the role of the European Asylum Office in the hotspots. Thank you very much for welcoming me here today. I am very bad in reading speeches and my team wrote me a five-page speech and I decided on a plane last night that I'm not going to read that speech, I'm going to speak from my heart and I'm going to tell you what I think happened in the last 18-24 months. What has was done about it, what was our role, what happened in terms of migration and asylum management in Europe in general and what I think it's coming ahead and that's perhaps the three elements of my intervention here today and I will do it spontaneously rather than reading from some pages. So I may miss a couple of important issues with me with that, and I may get very enthusiastic about some others so I'll try to keep focus on a few ones that are more important. So let's start with these three areas of intervention. What happened, how did we react collectively, what was the role of the asylum and what I think is ahead and I will say it and I will comment and I will talk about from the perspective of the asylum, from not as a global intervening but as a EU agency there is much involved in providing support to member states in managing the migration crisis and particularly to the asylum systems. So we all know and we've seen on the TV what happened in 2015 and then aggravated even more in the beginning of 2016, I'm talking about numbers, influxes particularly from the southern Mediterranean route and from Greece or into Greece from Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean. The first EU level reaction might have been around April 2015 when the special council meeting comes up with ten action points and three or four out of them mention EASA. And it's the first time that a council of ministers mentions an integrated response to the crisis management, to the migration flows and to a way of dealing with processing cases on the ground. So most of these ten action points in April 2015 are paving the way to what came up just a month and a half later when the commission published for the first time the European migration agenda. The European migration agenda has some priorities. The first one is about protecting the external borders. Second one is about saving lives at sea but the third one is about mechanisms, processes of working and organizing common European response to processing asylum applications. There are other priorities in the migration agenda as well but I'm just highlighting these three of them. This brings us back to May 2015. What happened after that, we had in September the situation got worse and for the first time the application of certain practical aspects of the European migration agenda led us collectively to the concept of hotspots. In the beginning there were some jokes about what a hotspot would be but in practical terms an hotspot has been a way of organizing the processing of case of interviews and case work at the place of arrivals. The concept of what spots have evolved and the contribution of ASO becomes greater after September 2015. In fact we were asked by several Council of Ministers conclusions to have an increased presence in Italy and in Greece and that changed a lot in our mandate itself. There are articles in the current mandate that allow us to have special support plans but there's nothing that ASO has done until the end of 2015 and we're just talking about 14 months ago for an organization that is five years and a few months old. There's nothing that we have done until the end of 2015, 14 months ago more or less that was close to a field operation. We were mostly a think tank like this institute, a supporter in terms of capacity building and trainings and we had some special support plans, we call it like that, that had a bit of field operations but again the field operations were based on capacity building, training and curriculums and some facilitating in certain areas like the courts and tribunals working with judges but again all of bringing best practices into the table and sharing experiences. Nothing that has to do with putting an operation on the field the way that I'm going to describe to you. So this is September 2015 and at that time we all remember the news on the TV where we saw thousands and thousands of people going through the Balkans and it's not by surprise that in October more or less I think there's a first summit with you leaders and the Western Balkan leaders. In November we start looking also at November 2015 at external causes at countries of origin at countries of training at root causes of migration flows and in Valetta we have welcomed well the Maltese government have welcomed the Valetta summit with the African leaders so we're starting to see Europe not only trying to organize a crisis management capacity at its external borders but also reviving because it's nothing new, I will make this point more visible, reviving a general approach to migration management that considers very much the external dimension of this phenomenon. So we have the external Balkans conclusions, we had the Valetta summit with the African leaders in November and then we moved on and the first contacts with Turkey took place, Chancellor Merkel went on his own first to Turkey and three months later the result was the U-Turkey statement comes out on the 18th of March so just three months after the Valetta summit and again this is addressing the root causes outside Europe and a different approach to manage the internal situations and the inflows into the European Union. In all these initiatives and all these conclusions the ASO name is mentioned with a reduced job with a medium job or with a big job. In the case of the U-Turkey statement we're giving the lion's share of organizing the response on the ground in the front line member states both in Italy and in Greece and that's where we had to jump from an initial concept of arts parts in September 2015 to four or five months later a big field operation and I can tell that at that time I was acting my predecessor had left and my operational department had 10 people including Secretary support and I was asked to organize operations right now today as we as I'm speaking right now we have about 400 people deployed 300 something in Greece and under and maybe about 400 150 for sure in Greece in Italy and about 300 in Greece permanently our figures have been like that two times we had more close to 500 600 people deployed and this is not deployed in the center of Dublin we're talking about some remote areas despite the fact these are these is still European territory the Greek islands don't have all the facilities and amenities to to set up an office with the conditions that your office have here in Dublin and most of the member states have in their own services we're talking about some of the camps the larger camp in Lesbos Island is at least 15 20 kilometers outside town in the hills there was no electricity and no communications no mobile communications no drainage no water supply no security no physical installations nothing and we had to deploy it from day to night so this was one of the biggest challenge that we have been confronted with right now we have about 12 offices all over Greece including a main office in Athens and we are deploying the numbers that I've been telling you about the challenges have not stopped here the statement with with Turkey came out on the 18th of I think it was a Friday if I'm not wrong of March 2016 the 19th was a Saturday and there was an emergency video conference called by the emergency reaction and management services of the Commission in Brussels where all member states have participated as always participated in Frontex as well one of the immediate actions coming out of the political decision was that all the migrants in highlands would not qualify for the new ways of working with Turkey so they would qualify for a location but they would not qualify for the admissibility program with Turkey which in other words the ones that were already in a highland could not be quickly processed and return it to Turkey only the new arrivals will be qualifying for that so a bigger task that we had to do was to evacuate thousands of people from the camps we did it together with the Greek authorities and they were transferred to mainland the stock of migrants are still some of them landlocked in mainland in Greece the new arrivals continue so for some weeks we had thousands of people arriving per day so but only for a few weeks maybe one two three weeks maximum and then the influx started gradually going down down down down the average today is below 50 a day but there are days where there are no arrivals in the Greek islands at all so did the new Turkey statement work yes in my opinion and it's the official position of the union it did work is it well perceived and welcomed by all parts of society no is well very much criticized by certain parts of society particularly by certain NGOs that have a different vision and they are welcome to have a different vision we in EAZO and particularly myself have developed a lot of work at civil society I have appointed a civil society officer she has now two assistants we have gone up into a permanent dialogue with NGOs and other parts of the civil society and it's part the comment on our work program the comment on our results so it's a part that should not be neglected but of course it's it's let's say a stakeholder or a number of stakeholders that have many times very different opinions from the mainstream so with the Turkish agreement we had to develop on the ground completely new methodologies of work it's not a normal interview that is done it's done on the spirit of assuming that migrants have the same level of protection in Turkey that they have in EU territory so it's a fast-track interview with guarantees of course so we had to develop during the second half of May 2016 and the beginning of April 2016 a new methodology of work we in the beginning had a lot of input from the member states in terms of experts we France and Greece and sorry in Germany for instance pledged for about 200 experts they gave us half of that in the couple in the first weeks but then one of the problems was that's the availability of experts from the member states start reducing a lot and it's still a problem that we face today so with you Turkish statement we start a completely new page of addressing high number influxes of irregular migrants into EU territory and dealing with it in a different way and they also is in the forefront is in the forefront is it the main player and he has been the main player of digesting and then responding with that part of the work we're not in the beginning of the workflow so when the rival comes we not border guards we're not law enforcement there's an initial interview but then if the migrant appeals for any any sort of of international protection is ended over to the asylum services of Greece but then they pass it on to us and it's it's the as a workforce as a work workers that do the the interview we have case workers we have specialists on vulnerable groups we have specialists on minors and children we have specialists on exclusion criterias even on security grounds we have developed models for techniques on interview for all sorts of things we adapting all that to the new resistive package that has been discussed in Brussels so that we can be ready for day one when it comes out we're bringing it to e-learning platforms and we're sharing and we're using it together with the member states we even reach a global level agreement with UNSCR whether using our materials worldwide so and this has been developed in the last 12 months or so some of them existed some of them did not exist in Greece again we all know that results of of the you turkey statement are not impressive in fact about only a thousand people have been returned to Greece there are many factors for that and a big chunk of those and one thousand people have been returned on voluntary basis so they volunteer to be returned to to to Turkey the biggest factor about these results it's not that we have not interviewed thousands and thousands of people is because the you the Greek system is based on you law and after the first interview and the decision is draft we don't sign the decisions the Greek system does sign the decision they appeal i mean the migrant appeal appeals and it goes to a first instance court we're also supporting the court in a different ways and once they appeal the the process goes for for at least two years there's a second level of appeal there's even third level of appeal in Greece the laws have been modified have been simplified but it's still very much like that so the practical result is that the you turkey statement has worked in stopping the massive numbers that are coming from Turkey but has not produced results in terms of returns to Turkey but the you initiatives have not stopped with the you turkey agreement that certain countries in February last year start closing borders and building walls along the Balkan route we also remember that after the you turkey agreement has been reached the commission comes up with two legislative packages so we have now three dimensions here on the ground one to manage directly the crisis and the numbers on which as well as an important role and we'll continue to have one that is about starting looking to the root causes the country of origin and the causes of transit i'll come back to that and one that is about changing the the the yaki particularly the legislative aspects of the yaki and it came with the with two two waves the first one in in may in may last year where we saw and that's part of my last element of intervention here we saw the commission tabling a new regulation for creating what could be a fully fledged agency asylum agency so the future of the current as they also reforming we also reforming eurotak and then what could be the evolution from doubling three to doubling four which is in itself is an entire world the second wave of legislation proposals came up in july last year and it is about mostly ways of working procedures qualification and reception and there's a seven area of working which is the union resettlement proposal and and this is very much linked to the external dimension as well we have seen since summer last year an intensive work and discussions between the parliament and the member states in many different groups looking into what should be the the real extent of change into the ways the member states want to work in the future in terms of the common european asylum system i would like to concentrate the most on on on what could be the future of aso and this is there are in fact there is a curiosity here certain documents call it the asylum agency others called this the asylum agency the the agency for asylum one way or another is a a and the acronym is going to be e u a a so we have prepared for that we have new colors new badges new new new everything and and we will present it in our management board in june and we're ready to start tomorrow if necessary so and what comes up in the pipeline uh for aso is um i would say to a number of priorities of course first of all to continue with the field operations way they are in fact we're sophisticating it a bit more because in certain maintenance major art spots we now building um offices for processing casework outside the art spots for number one for security reasons number two to have better working conditions because where we work it's it's um quite basic we work in containers we work in and the sun and winters in those islands are quite harsh so in the main island islands of lesbos and kios we are now about finishing some renovation of buildings that we contracted out and and soon we'll have um um a different uh capacity to work we will keep the containers in the containers we can process about a thousand sorry 100 cases a day all together in all islands with the new uh with the new offices we can escalate it up to 200 uh maybe 250 and if we build other temporary uh facilities it can go up to a few under more but not much more than that so if by any chance the numbers of the influx numbers come up to similar numbers of 2015 and 2016 that we all hope that doesn't happen we'll have a thousand or two thousand or even more uh cases unattended a day so nobody wants that to happen and particularly as we does want that to happen and the new agency will not want to have that on our plates for sure the external dimension has evolved dramatically um I would like to just recall the two last summits that took place one again in Malta in February where um an informal summit on Libya took place and there is a declaration about that issued by the council and there is an implementation plan and more than that they're leaking the implementation plan to many trust funds that are already operating the trust fund for for for Turkey the trust fund for Africa and other trust funds on migration the asylum migration integration fund the internal security funds so the the Turkish fund alone has about six billion euros three billion have already been disbursed to Turkey there's there's of course a lot of intentions to link whatever crisis management policies and action are taking place with prevention with uh with sustainable development through partnership frameworks through compact uh frameworks as well as again is mentioned on many areas we can support initiatives on on information campaigns on supporting member states on on on resettlement from those areas of of the world particularly if the compacts with Africa go ahead there's at least five countries that have been prioritized and work has started with um with Nigeria with Mali with Senegal with Niger and there's a fifth one that I just forgot but there's five priority countries in which programs have started under a compact approach the compact word here has to do with linking economic development and economic aid and building migration and asylum elements into that EU has been one of the greatest if not the largest perhaps the second or maybe the the first one it varies between us and the United States year by year but the largest provider of external development aid we will continue to do that for sure and and part of of that aid it's now to be linked with migration aspects and migration management aspects what is the role of ASO in that we have deployed at least an officer for the first time to anchor we have been working with with the DGMM so that's the director general for migration management of Turkey they visit recently and I'm invited to go back to Turkey and to start having an action plan on capacity building and training of with the main purpose to upscale the way that the Turkish system works in general this is quite new for us as well and I'm quite encouraging despite the fact of the last political developments it is in the middle of these political developments that the EU agency is invited to work closure and better with the Turkish authorities we don't envisage to have any practical operational role there other than capacity building and training and they're very keen in using certain of our models in their own work which in practical terms will not oppose so we're talking about interview techniques qualification and techniques interviews all all the we have about 17 areas there are there have been development on capacity building and training and they're very keen about half of them so you will see soon certain developments of work between us and Turkey directly on top of that we have a liaison officer is very active on on on resettlement I think this is historically what happened in the last 18 months is I would like to summarize it before I go what what I think it's coming up for us and for the EU we have seen a response of the EU that was based on crisis management on processing cases at the point of entry and on on on on trying to stop the influxes by doing that of course the the root causes of these big influxes have to be addressed and there's many initiatives that started I would say with the Valetta summit in 2015 with the African leaders but they have not stopped in all these initiatives has been at different levels involved of course our involvement was greater with the Turkish agreement and in Greece and in Italy we have opened recently also offices in Cyprus and we're supporting directly Cyprus on a new phenomenon there's almost a travel agent like organized smuggler business that's is bringing boats regularly every every week on the same day from Turkey to the Turkish Cypriot side and then crossing them to the Cypriot side in numbers there are significant to the point where we got a request to work directly with the Cypriot services and we started about a month ago an operation in Cyprus small about a dozen people but sufficiently important to open an office in Cyprus so we have also an office in Cyprus and we have of course other other programs with Bulgaria and other countries before I go into the future I would like to say that everything I've been saying has been done without losing sight and without dropping the portfolio that we had before the crisis and the portfolio we had before the crisis were based on on on curriculums on training on capacity building on photos for discussion and on summarizing figures statistics about design situation in Europe we have evolved the information part we have much better products we have much better web based platforms to share that information we have double amazingly but I would like to indirectly there's none of them each year but my compliments and admiration to the to the training units that has double the number of trainings in 2016 with more or less the same stuff we have developed three line platforms we have developed other platforms where all these materials are are are available of course these are restricted platforms and I think working with the courts and tribunals also knew a lot of developments so I think this has been a terrible achievement considering that many internal resources had to be deviated from capacity building into field operations so the field operations in themselves were new for us and were also a great success and the proof of that is that continuously ASO is now mentioned in all the external dimension programs in all the areas that were traditionally our work and and and the fact that the European Parliament and the member states are very actively looking into the next generation of of of legislation in which we have jobs in all of them it's not just in Dublin it will be the main operators of of the asylum intervention pools of the distribution key mechanisms have to be put in place on the monitoring on the guidance this is all additional tasks that the new legislation is coming up with and is giving to us in resources terms until 2020 we're going to grow 10 times 10 fold until 2020 compared to just before the crisis last year alone our budget was amended four times and and we went from a few million into almost 75 million currently we have 100 and we just went above 100 millions that we managing so that also brought a lot of needs to restructure internally to have induction courses for the new staff to absorb the new staff is not just having more figures more on the paper is also being able to use them in in real life in in real times that is something that I would like to highlight as well which brings me a lot of optimism in terms of the growth pattern that we've been achieving and looking for the next three years if we've done it from this level to this level we can do it from this level to whatever comes in the future so and what is the future the future for me is about four or five I prefer to say four plus one and I will reserve the one to the end because the other four will not work without the fifth for sure so the first one is whatever we'll build we have to have a crisis mechanism able to respond to crisis because crisis might happen again and we've been busy working on that there is some there are some cliches about lessons learned best practices but I'm trying to build them and also use them in practical terms the experience we built in the art spots cannot be lost if something happens again we'll be able to respond much quicker we can go up to processing 203 and the cases a day I can double that but I cannot never match 10 000 cases a day and it's not feasible for the unit at all so we cannot go back we should not go back to the figures of the beginning of 2016 barely 12 months ago but should the worst happen as on the new agency we'll be much more able to process influxes that we were 18 months ago one fact for that is that we've created innovative ways of having our own workforce somehow they're being compatible to the solidarity spirit of having member state experts working in our own operations in fact what we did is recruiting people training them and then we have developed our own workforce is it the right way to do it no it's against the European spirit but it works the truth is it works we have now 400 people on the ground and a big chunk of that is our own workforce and this week I've signed another 25 so we're going to increase in Greece again despite the numbers are going down we're preparing more capacity in Greece so whatever happens we need to keep a crisis response mechanism there is there are some member states that have written about it quite recently at minister's level that they want even to there is legislation about it there is a directive on on temporary response measures that can be activated but never been used but certain member states want to build on that personally I'm in favor of it that should the influxes come up again for any political reason and we know what Mr Erdogan has been saying after his recent uh uh referendums and the changes in Turkey are visible so if we face those situations again um is Europe ready is there a plan B David asked me um so as I know that the answers here the speech is taped right is the answers are not taped so I'm taking the risk yes I don't think there's a plan B the plan B is the plan A is what exists right now and um there is there are attempts to to to to have um some reactivation of the temporary measures directive uh reactivated again so that we can have institutionalized a rapid response should the numbers come up again but the entire bet of the EU policies are not to repeat the situation of 2015 and 2016 is to address the root causes so the number two is about the legislative package so what's going to happen is already happening we're reforming the entire common european asylum system one of them is a new asylum agency with an expanded mandate not going back to that but I would like to say that the three or four or five main features there's plenty of them one of them is an asylum intervention pool of up to 500 experts coming from the member states this is not voluntary right now is voluntary once the regulation is approved is mandatory and we will define the new agency will define the profiles the curriculums the deployments and the availability of those experts and they have to be mandatory trained so europe is putting together an agency with 500 staff plus an intervention pool of another 500 so this is also a way to prepare for crisis but also to prepare for other aspects of the new mandate monitoring of national systems guidance on country of origin and statistics analysis of that guidelines on that a permanent distribution key which is an evolution of the relocation program that has not worked very well but the permanent relocation key will be also mandatory as an aspect the main one of solidarity in times of crisis I think these are the main aspects and many of them have brought up a lot of disagreement in Brussels they've been discussed for almost a year because these packages came up in May and July last year we are going into May right now but some of them are getting to a final stage of discussions so we are optimistic by nature at the answer so I think the regulation itself the new regulation will come up soon so this is the number two element about what's going to happen a crisis mechanism must be there the legislation package must be finished what is my number three I think the external dimension needs to be continued and it's not me it's visible there's a lot of summits saying that I mentioned the valid summit the the valeta summit in 2015 then then we have the Balkans then we have the turkeys agreement then we have now the the valeta statement which is about Libya and then we have the partnerships the compacts the neighborhood policy so everybody is very busy in Brussels coming up of ways of addressing the root causes and linking that to a global approach don't forget the new york declaration there is also the 2030 2030 sustainable development program I think of the UN wish many countries particularly European countries but also Turkey in particular and Georgia and others have pushed to have and is there now as part of the sustainable global development for particularly for the third world the migration and even the asylum dimension is written down there which brings the big donors and in particular the EU to the position and EU has been one of the biggest supporter if not the biggest supporter financially and in policy terms of transforming those global sustainable develop UN development targets until 2030 into global compacts on migration and on refugees it's just not more migration anymore there are global compacts on on refugees as well and we are you you one of the biggest donors on that so then there are the regional partnerships with Russia with the Eastern partnership with all the processes the Budapest process the proud process and these are the Eastern European partnerships as well we have bilateral agreements are very strong with Brazil with the United States with the ACP countries which is not the bilateral but it's it's a one-to-one with the African union as well so I see all the external dimension and addressing root causes very strong and there's a lot of resources and money always talks louder and for the first time there are big funds and trust funds being put into migration issues and asylum issues and they are connected with bilateral agreements with priority countries so I'm not going into the detail of that but it's again an area where a house will participate a lot so we have the crisis mechanism we have the legislative package we have the external dimension and we have the new agency with an external mandate as I've been commenting before so these are the four areas that I see as the main pillars of the near future for migration and asylum management not only for ASO from our perspective for sure but also from the member states perspective but I promise and I have now five seconds to finish that there are four plus one and this one is the key one nothing of these will work if there is not determination solidarity and responsibility from the member states individually so no matter how much progress will be brought on paper how many resources will be put there if the member states cannot work together and heck together on simple and complex issues then it will not work again it's not just the new agency it's there are practical things that are not working and they don't have to do with legislation with policies with trust funds they have to do many times with overcoming bottlenecks they are practical on the day-to-day work there is of course a dimension that is the evolvement the evolution I'm sorry from from directives into regulations so these will become mandatory law in in in the EU but again it depends very much on willingness of each individual member state to make it work faster better or just delay it so four plus one thank you very much to listen to me I didn't read anything I wrote in the plane and I didn't read my team speech of five pages but I hope you have enjoyed some insights that I've shared with you today