By Georgi Gotev | EURACTIV.com with Reuters Est. 2min 12-04-2018 Children refugees, mostly from Syria and Afghanistan, who live at the Elaiona and Schistos reception facilities are guided on the ancient Acropolis Hill in Athens, Greece, 9 May 2016л [Alexandros Beltes/EPA] EURACTIV is part of the Trust Project >>> Print Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Refugees who enter the European Union alone as minors can apply to be reunited with their families, even if they reach legal adulthood before the end of the process, the EU’s top court ruled today (12 April). At the peak of Europe’s migrant crisis in 2015, 96,465 lone children applied for asylum in the EU, although numbers have fallen since then. The official term is “unaccompanied minors”. A report by the EU asylum office, EASO clearly shows that the vast majority of the unaccompanied minors are from Afghanistan. Out of almost 200,000, asylum applications from nationals of Afghanistan, one-quarter were unaccompanied minors. Afghan boys behind huge increase in unaccompanied minor migrants to EU The large number of unaccompanied minors arriving in Europe can be explained by Afghan families sending their children hoping they will get refugee status easier, and then seek reunification with the rest of the family, according to a new report by the EU asylum office. Some countries like Sweden recorded a particularly large influx of unaccompanied minor migrants. An official from EASO admitted that in Afghanistan, families send out their children, strategically, hoping that they will manage to get a status in Europe, and then use them as anchor children and be reunited with them. 26,000 unaccompanied children flock to Sweden over last 4 months Over the last 4 months, a record-breaking 115,000 asylum-seekers arrived in Sweden. Among them were 26,000 unaccompanied children, enough to fill 1,000 school classes, Morgan Johannson, Swedish Minister for Justice and Migration, told the Brussels press yesterday (6 January). The Court of Justice of the EU ruled on a Dutch case in which authorities rejected an application by an Eritrean who arrived as a minor for her family to obtain temporary residence permits. Since her paperwork was not submitted by a refugee organisation until after she turned 18, the application was rejected because she no longer could be considered an “unaccompanied minor”. Winning approval for refugees’ families to join them in Europe can become more difficult if they are considered adults. However, the court determined that the Dutch rejection breached EU law, saying it would otherwise be “entirely unforeseeable” for a minor to understand whether they had the right to seek asylum for their families. It ruled that applications for family reunification should be made within three months of a minor obtaining refugee status. Read more with EURACTIV EU clears path for collective law suitsConsumers will be able to sue companies in collective action lawsuits spanning multiple EU countries, under a new European Commission proposal.
