EU risks ‘tectonic changes’ as migrant flow swells to over 700,000
SWITZERLAND (AFP) — Europe’s worst migration crisis since World War II risks triggering “tectonic changes,” a top European Union (EU) official warned Tuesday, as figures showed more than 700,000 newcomers have reached the continent’s Mediterranean shores this year.
”The situation will deteriorate even further,” European Council president Donald Tusk said, warning of a “new wave of refugees ( arriving) from Aleppo and other Syrian regions under Russian bombardment.”
”I have no doubt that this challenge has the potential to change the EU we have built,” he told the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
” And what is even more dangerous, it has the potential to create tectonic changes in the European political landscape. And these are not changes for the better.”
European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, meanwhile, slammed EU member states for providing less than half of the guards pledged to the bloc’s Frontex border agency in migrant hotspots Greece and Italy.
”Member states have been moving slowly at a time when they should be running,” he said.
Of the 775 border guards needed, EU countries have only provided 326 over the past month, Juncker said, adding that many bloc members had also failed so far to keep their promises of financial support.
The stinging criticism came after the EU vowed to help set up 100,000 places in reception centers in Greece and along the migrant route through the Balkans as part of a 17-point action plan devised with the countries most affected by the crisis.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande held talks in Paris on Tuesday, with a French official saying afterwards the two shared “the same position on what should be done politically and... on the front line.”