(Brusels) “Comece encourages the EU and its member states to play a more proactive role in upgrading their efforts and overcoming the deep causes of forced migration, by promoting the rule of law, the protection of the citizens’ fundamental rights and peace-making facilities, as well as more ambitious investments in the native and transit countries”. The message comes today from the Commission of the EU Bishops Conference (Comece), which, at a recent meeting of its migration and asylum workgroup – partly in preparation to the European Council in late June – discussed the current “status quo in the negotiations on the new Dublin Regulation”: “The rewording of the Dublin Regulation will make the states responsible for asylum applications and for rehoming refugees through a sharing mechanism”, Comece explains in the message. The current disagreements among the EU member states concern “the compulsoriness of the mechanism and the number of years that refugees have to stay in the country that is responsible for them”. One of the things highlighted at the meeting is that “local authorities have problems enforcing the European legislation that equates helping illegal migrants enter, cross and stay in a country to a crime”. Sometimes, “a threatening atmosphere may discourage people from meeting their moral duties and sometimes from assisting illegal migrants”.