Germany faces $22.5b refugee cost

27 police hurt in unrest at Calais migrant camp

BERLIN, Nov 10, (Agencies): Germany faces costs of over 21 billion euros ($22.58 billion) this year to house, feed and educate hundreds of thousands of refugees, the Munich-based Ifo institute said on Tuesday. The new estimate, which assumes that 1.1 million migrants will seek asylum in Germany in 2015, represents a sharp increase over a previous projection from late September which put the cost at 10 billion euros.

That estimate had assumed 800,000 arrivals and did not include costs related to education and training, which the Ifo said were necessary to ensure that refugees, many of them fleeing war in the Middle East, were successfully integrated.

“Training and access to the labour market are key in terms of both costs and integration,” Gabriel Felbermayr of the Ifo institute said in a statement.

The German government has not published an official estimate for how much the influx of refugees will cost it this year, but it has boosted funding to the country’s 16 regional states by 4 billion euros.

For next year, German states and towns have said they could face costs of up 16 billion euros. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has said the federal government will invest roughly 8 bilion euros next year to shelter and integrate asylum seekers.

Refugees Ifo also reiterated its call for a flexible interpretation of Germany’s minimum wage, saying a majority of businesses saw the 8.50 euro ($9.10) floor as a hindrance to employing refugees.

Some members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative camp have also called for flexibility on the minimum wage, but her coalition partner, the Social Democrats (SPD), have ruled out changes to one of their flagship reforms.

Riot police and migrants camped near the French port of Calais have clashed in overnight violence that aid workers said reflects the growing frustration of refugees’ inability to smuggle themselves aboard trucks and trains bound for England.

Calais police said officers monitoring the 6,000-resident shantytown east of the port city were pelted with rocks after midnight Monday and again Tuesday as migrants repeatedly tried to block a neighboring highway that leads to the main ferry terminal. They said 27 officers have suffered minor injuries, including 11 early Tuesday.

Aid workers said police fired tear gas canisters at rock-throwing crowds on the highway and in the camp. Migrants said sparks and heat from some canisters caused scorch damage to tents, but no serious injuries were reported as most campers sought safety inside their tents and shacks. An Associated Press journalist saw scores of spent gas cylinders near the camp.

“Police came into the camp, halfway up the main drag, and fired tear gas right into the camp,” said Rowan Farrell, a volunteer from Manchester, England, who helps to run a library and other support services for the camp.

Tensions have been mounting since France started imposing tough new security measures, including 15-foothigh (5-meter-high) razor-topped fences and increased police patrols, to stop the flow of undocumented people from reaching Britain by boat or train.

Police said they fired tear gas to force migrants off the highway that overlooks the camp and leads to cargo and passenger ferries less than 2 kms (1 mile) away. They said the latest overnight clashes lasted about five hours.

Campers said Muslim hard-liners in the camp were angered by news Sunday of an anti-immigrant demonstration in the center of Calais. That rally attracted barely 80 people.

Slovenia’s Prime Minister Miro Cerar said on Tuesday Slovenia would put up “temporary technical hurdles” on its border with Croatia to control migrant flows, but would keep border crossings open.

More than 170,000 migrants and refugees from the Middle East, Asia and Africa have crossed Slovenia since midOctober when Hungary closed its southern border with Croatia diverting the flow towards Slovenia. Around 30,000 more are expected to arrive in Slovenia over the next few days.

Meeting European Union interior ministers agreed Monday to deliver quicker on their promises for tackling the migration crisis as EU president Luxembourg called for averting a “humanitarian catastrophe” with winter approaching.

Monday’s extraordinary meeting came ahead of a special EU-Africa summit in Malta on Wednesday, focused on how to reduce the flow via Libya, a key migrant route after Turkey and the Balkans.

EU member states have come under fire from the commission, the 28-nation bloc’s executive, for taking too long to act on pledges to tighten external borders, set up centres to process migrants, and relocate asylum seekers from overstretched Italy and Greece.

But their interior ministers pledged to move faster on those fronts as well as accelerate the building of shelters up through the western Balkans route from Greece, where migrants land after the dangerous sea crossing from Turkey.

“The European Union has to do everything it can to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe as winter approaches,” Jean Asselborn, the Luxembourg immigration minister, told a closing press conference.

“We have to try to save people at sea... and we can’t allow people to die of cold in the Balkans,” said Asselborn, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency.

The European Commission proposed a multi-pronged plan in May to tackle the worst migrant crisis in Europe since World War II after nearly 800 migrants drowned in the Mediterranean on their way to Italy via Libya.

The crisis worsened over the summer when hundreds of thousands more people fleeing wars, persecution and poverty mainly in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan arrived in Greece and the Balkans via Turkey.

More than 3,000 people have drowned among the nearly 800,000 who have reached Europe this year, and the Greek coastguard said on Monday it had discovered over 300 hidden in a yacht that ran aground near the island of Lesbos.

However, EU states have bickered for months over a joint solution, particularly over plans to relocate a total of 160,000 asylum seekers from frontline countries to other parts of the bloc.

The EU finally approved the relocation schemes last month in the face of fierce opposition from Hungary and other eastern member states that are grappling with an anti-immigrant backlash.

But since then only 147 asylum seekers have been relocated from Italy and Greece to countries like Sweden and Luxembourg, Asselborn said.

Europe’s future will depend to a large degree on Germany’s approach to the migration crisis and other states should show more solidarity by jointly tackling this historic challenge, European Council President Donald Tusk said on Monday.

Europe is grappling with its worst refugee crisis since World War Two and Germany so far has taken in the bulk of some one million people expected to arrive this year.

While Tusk has repeatedly stressed the urgency of tightening Europe’s borders, Chancellor Angela Merkel has pushed for states to show solidarity and share responsibilities for refugees.