EU leaders ‘move’ to tighten borders
Teen spoke of revenge
BRUSSELS, Oct 18, (Agencies): European Union leaders agreed Thursday to push ahead with plans to boost cooperation with North African countries and beef up the bloc’s borders in an effort to stop migrants entering Europe.
A statement from their summit in Brussels emphasized the need to step up cooperation with countries that people leave and transit through to seek shelter or better lives in Europe.
They said that work with those countries on “investigating, apprehending and prosecuting smugglers and traffickers should be intensified.” They also called for a joint smuggling task force to be set up.
Well over 1 million migrants entered Europe in 2015, most of them Syrians and Iraqis fleeing conflict, but numbers have dropped significantly since the EU began outsourcing the challenge to Turkey.
Turkey has been offered at least 3 billion euros ($3.4 billion), ostensibly in Syrian refugee aid, to stop people leaving there for Europe, and the bloc wants to reproduce that model elsewhere. The EU, whose president is Donald Tusk, has had to look outside to solve the problem because reforms to its asylum system are blocked by the refusal of some countries to accept refugee quotas or to share the burden of hosting them in a fair way.
Meanwhile, EU leaders on Thursday condemned the attempted hack on the global chemical weapons watchdog and vowed to step up the bloc’s efforts to tackle cyber attacks.