My name is Angela Martini. I work on borders, but I worked for many years on asylum.
I would also like to underline one fact that you are aware of, Mr. Davies. Contrary to Canada, in Europe the vast majority of asylum seekers arrive by irregular means. The vast majority of asylum seekers who arrive here don't have travel documents or visas. Very few arrive by regular means. You are aware that resettlement in the European Union is not very developed. For us, of the 250,000 who arrived last year, a big chunk arrived irregularly.
As Ioana said, they're not penalized. When they arrive from a country that has been designated at the national level as a safe country of origin, they go through a quicker procedure. They're not penalized. There is a presumption that their claim is unfounded. They still have access to remedies.
If I may add, regarding the first question about the duration of a procedure, there is no such thing as the ideal duration, whether it's too short or too long. Too long we could say is if someone is stuck for a year waiting for a decision. The most important thing is that the guarantees of the asylum seeker are respected so that he or she has access, for instance, to a lawyer and to an interpreter, that the interview takes place allowing enough time for the applicant to put forward the elements of his or her application, and that there has been access to a judicial review. The assessment is to be done more on the merits of the individual examination rather than to say that 14 days is too short a time, or not. It might be a perfectly adequate period of time if the procedural steps are being respected.