Last chance for Europe to reach refugee deal
EUROPEAN Union (EU) ministers tried to hammer out a deal on plans to relocate 120,000 refugees at emergency talks yesterday amid deep divisions over how to handle Europe’s worst migration crisis since the Second World War.
The United Nations (UN) and other international organisations warned it was the “last chance” for increasingly overwhelmed European states to agree on how to cope with the tide of people fleeing conflict in countries such as Syria and Afghanistan.
Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, who is chairing the meeting, said: “We have a text on the table which should deliver an agreement. It is very balanced. I think it will have a good influence on all the delegations so we can reach a result.”
But central and eastern European states still strongly resist plans to force EU member countries to take a share of the new arrivals.
“I want to confirm that both the interior minister and myself will unequivocally reject any effort to introduce a permanent mechanism of refugee redistribution,” Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said. “We also reject the introduction of quotas.”
The ministers are trying to reach a deal that could be ratified by EU leaders at a crisis summit today, which will focus on wider issues of strengthening the bloc’s external borders.
Tensions have continued to boil over, with fears the EU’s Schengen passportfree zone could be under threat from migrants, many of whom are trying to make their way to Germany.
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maziere, whose country is set to take in about 1-million asylum seekers this year, said he was “optimistic” that a deal could be reached, but warned that the talks would be difficult.
“In the end I am optimistic, but it’s not done yet,” he said.
EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said the bloc faced an “existential crisis”.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees warned that the talks could be the “last opportunity” for a united response to a crisis it said was becoming more and more “chaotic and unpredictable”, and was increasing tensions between European countries.
On the eve of the talks, UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged leaders across the EU to “show leadership and compassion” as the continent grapples with the wave of migrants, many of them refugees such as Abdullah, a 35-year-old Syrian father of two from war-ravaged Aleppo.
“We have no choice but to leave. We are dying here every day,” he said in Istanbul, where he has worked odd jobs for three years to save for a journey across Europe he hopes to make soon.
More than half-a-million people have already braved dangerous sea crossings and arduous land treks to make it into Europe this year, heaping pressure on countries along the migrant trail, some of which have closed their borders while others have diverted the flow.
Some 2,800 people have died this year trying to cross the Mediterranean in flimsy boats.
Top diplomats from Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, all of whom have rejected the EU proposal for binding refugee quotas, met in Prague on Monday with their counterpart from Luxembourg, which holds the EU presidency.
The European Commission has proposed binding quotas for 22 member states to take in 120,000 refugees: 54,000 asylum seekers from Hungary, 50,400 from Greece and 15,600 from Italy. Sources in Brussels said the EU ministers were considering a watereddown plan that would drop binding quotas and leave Hungary out of the scheme, as it refuses to participate.
Budapest has taken the toughest stance on the crisis, erecting razor-wire barriers along its borders with Serbia and Croatia in a bid to keep migrants out and enacting new laws to jail illegal migrants. On Monday, members of parliament voted to give troops at Hungary’s borders the right to use rubber bullets, tear gas and net guns — devices that fire netting to entangle the target — in a nonlethal way “unless it cannot be avoided”.
Meanwhile, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, whose country is one of the main landing points for refugees crossing the Mediterranean called for responsibility to be shared, saying “otherwise there is no point in talking about a united Europe”.
But debt-hit Greece is itself likely to face pressure at the emergency summit today to accept further EU aid to manage its borders, in a move that could raise concerns in Athens over national sovereignty.