EU LEADERS SEAL MIGRATION DEAL
They agree on centres to process asylum seekers on European shores
EUROPEAN leaders reached a deal on migration yesterday after tense and lengthy talks, but the pledges made to strengthen borders were vague and a bleary-eyed German Chancellor Angela Merkel conceded differences remained.
Under the agreement, reached after nine hours of often stormy talks, European Union leaders agreed to share out refugees arriving in the bloc on a voluntary basis and create “controlled centres” inside the EU to process asylum requests.
They also agreed to share responsibility for migrants rescued at sea, a key demand of Italy’s new Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.
“Italy is not alone anymore,” he said.
Conte, whose government includes the anti-establishment 5Star movement and far-right League, had earlier refused to endorse a summit text on security and trade until other leaders had pledged to help Italy manage Mediterranean arrivals.
Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, whose far-right League party has campaigned to bar migrants fleeing Africa and expel those already in Italy, yesterday welcomed the deal, saying Italy had obtained 70 per cent of what it had been seeking.
“Let’s see the concrete commitments,” Salvini said in a radio interview when asked to comment on the deal.
The Brussels meeting underscored how Europe’s 2015 spike in immigration continues to haunt the bloc, despite a sharp drop in arrivals of people fleeing conflict and economic hardship in the Middle East and Africa.
It took place in an atmosphere of political crisis, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel under intense political pressure at home to take a firmer stance on migration.
Merkel, speaking to reporters at 5am, sought to put a positive spin on the result, saying it was a good signal that leaders had been able to agree a common text on the migration issue.
But she acknowledged that the bloc still had “a lot of work to do to bridge the different views”.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who has sharply criticised Italy for refusing to allow a migrant rescue ship into its ports, said European cooperation had “won the day”.
In a final statement full of convoluted language designed to satisfy the divergent views, the leaders agreed to restrict migrant moves within the bloc, but made clear virtually all of their pledges would be carried out on a “voluntary basis” by member states.
They also agreed to tighten their external border and increase financing for Turkey, Morocco and other North African states to prevent migration to Europe.
It was unclear whether the deal would be enough to appease Merkel’s coalition partner, the Christian Social Union, which has threatened to shut Bavaria’s border to migrants. That could trigger the collapse of her threemonth-old government as well as the EU’s Schengen zone of free travel.