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«Direct reception of refugees from Moria, demand for a national conference and stopping Dublin case returns to Greece»

Postulat d'urgence
Level: Municipality
Municipality: Burgdorf (BE)
Status: Accepted

Attendance

The SP faction submitted an urgent postulate on 14 September 2020:

The local council is requested:

  1. to examine whether and to what extent the town of Burgdorf could directly accept refugees from Moria on the island of Lesbos in Greece.
  2. to request the federal government to immediately convene a national conference for the direct reception of refugees.
  3. to call on the Confederation to immediately stop the repatriation of Dublin cases to Greece.

Application-City-Burgdorf:

The postulate was accepted on 02.11.20:

At number 1, the city council decided not to intervene. Numbers 2 and 3 were referred to the city council. 21 people voted yes (SP, Grüne, EVP and GLP), 9 people voted no (BDP, SVP) with 7 abstentions (FDP, SVP). This is a very clear result, which shows that such initiatives can also be successful in smaller cities – and should be pushed further.

In the statement of the local council it says:

In principle, the municipal council recognizes the postulants’ demand to follow Switzerland’s humanitarian tradition. As early as 2014, when a large wave of refugees swept over Western Europe, the city of Burgdorf proved that it can make a great effort to take in asylum seekers. Thanks to excellent cooperation between the canton, the city, churches, various institutions, ORS AG and many volunteers, a good range of support and integration services for migrants has been created. The population has also supported the efforts of the city. Should the town of Burgdorf again be assigned a special task by the canton to receive refugees from Moria or another crisis area, the municipal council, together with the town population, is prepared to accept this task and take in people seeking help.

In a letter to the Federal Council and the Government Council of the Canton of Berne, the Municipal Council is prepared to offer to admit refugees to emergency accommodation and to support them together with ORS and voluntary organizations working in Burgdorf. At the same time, the municipal council will ask the Federal Council not to send any Dublin cases back to Greece for the time being. In the light of the above, the Municipal Council is prepared to accept paragraphs 2 and 3 of the postulate. However, paragraph 1 of the postulate is outside the competence of the municipality. For the reasons explained above, this cannot be accepted.