Paris (AFP)
The budget "Immigration, asylum and integration" will increase by 8% next year, additional resources that will be mainly allocated to reducing the time to process asylum claims, according to the Finance 2020 bill unveiled Thursday.
The additional 130 million euros will be used "mainly to cope with the observed and projected dynamics of the asylum application", which has increased by 22% in 2018 and is expected to increase by 12% in 2019, reads in the bill published a few days before a debate on migration policy.
In this parliamentary debate wanted by the executive, there must be much talk of the increase in the asylum application in France, where more than 123,000 people applied for refugee status in 2018.
The budget, which brings the appropriations for the "Immigration, asylum and integration" mission to € 1.82 billion, will in particular enable "significant means" to be increased by Ofpra, the agency responsible for studying the asylum application, increasing its resources to 92 million euros against 71 in 2019.
Some 200 jobs will be created, including 150 protection officers, ie the people responsible for interviewing asylum seekers, "to contribute to the target of reducing the processing time to six months".
© 2019 AFP