Founding In 2008, the
European Commission proposed the creation of European Asylum Support Office (EASO) to boost cooperation between member states in managing asylum requests. On 30 November 2010 in
Brussels, at the
Justice and Home Affairs Council, Malta was officially selected to host the organisation, winning out over candidates Cyprus and Bulgaria.
Operations Between 2011 and 2014, EASO staff has doubled, from 42 to 84, and its annual budget increased from 8 to 14.5 million euros. The
April 2015 Mediterranean Sea migrant shipwrecks led European leaders to reconsider their border control and migrant processing policies. On 20 April, the
European Commission proposed a 10-point plan that included EASO in the process of assisting asylum applicants and collecting information about smuggling operations. Following an unprecedented migrant influx, EASO in 2015 proposed a relocation programme that was agreed upon to support the 'frontline' Member States of
Italy and
Greece, who were under pressure."After a proposal made by the Commission in May 2015, the Council adopted two
decisions – (EU) 2015/1523 and (EU) 2015/1601 respectively – establishing a temporary relocation mechanism for 160 000 applicants in need of international protection from Greece and Italy, to be implemented over two years until September 2017." The May 2016 trend report, illustrates a 5% drop in applications for international protection since April to 99,000. However, the overall number of international protection applications in the first 6 months of 2016 has exceeded those in 2015, surpassing 500,000 as compared to 350,000 in 2015. The recent immigration crisis in Europe has seen most applications coming from conflict-heavy states like
Syria,
Afghanistan, and
Iraq. Syria was seen to have the most applications in May with 28,056 persons claiming protection, followed by Afghanistan with 15,648, and Iraq with 10,341. Heijer and colleagues, have recommended that EASO should become the centralised organisation "encouraging more uniform decisions".
A reinforced mandate: EUAA As of the 19th of January 2022, EASO adopted a reinforced mandate to become the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA). The Agency has vehemently denied the allegations, which have not been corroborated by any EU control body, to date. ==Management==