EU BLAMED FOR MIGRANT CHAOS
Europe’s border crisis is totally out of control
EU chiefs were blamed yesterday for sparking the escalating migrant crisis now engulfing Europe.
Critics say their dream policy of open borders has turned into a “shambolic” nightmare causing horrifi c scenes across the Continent.
Examples of out- of- control migrant chaos were reported yesterday from the Channel to the Eastern Mediterranean.
Thousands of British passengers were stranded or delayed by migrants clambering aboard Eurostar trains in Calais.
In the Turkish holiday resort of Bodrum, the bodies of several migrants – including two small children – were washed up on the shore after their tiny boat capsized as they tried to reach the EU by making a perilous 13- mile crossing to the Greek island of Kos.
In Hungary, 3,000 migrants desperate to reach Germany protested around the main railway station in the capital Budapest, shutting the terminal for a second day. In Greece, 6,200
migrants had to be taken by three ferries from two overwhelmed small islands to the mainland.
On Tyneside, Border Force officials found 20 migrants hidden in a lorry ferried over from Amsterdam and sent 15 of them back immediately.
And Dutch police foiled a plot to smuggle migrants to East Anglia. In the port of Ijmuiden they seized a small yacht with 25 people from Albania and Vietnam crammed on board, along with detailed charts of the Suffolk and Norfolk coasts.
Each migrant is thought to have paid £ 4,000 for the dangerous journey to a new life in Britain.
Meanwhile two- thirds of the 90,000 migrants rescued from the Mediterranean and taken to Italy have already vanished – presumably to seek asylum or black market jobs in wealthier northern countries.
Unchecked
As European countries engaged in bitter exchanges last night over how best to resolve the crisis, the EU’s treasured Schengen Agreement allowing free movement across most of the continent was beginning to crumble.
Britain is not a member of the Schengen zone and retains its own borders.
Many European member states are now blaming the agreement for the scale of the crisis because once migrants are inside the zone they can travel unchecked to any of the member countries.
Slovakia’s foreign minister Miroslav Lajcak said last night: “Schengen has de facto fallen apart. Under normal circumstances, it’s difficult to get a Schengen visa.
“Now there are tens of thousands of people walking around here without anyone checking them.”
At Germany’s request, Italy yesterday agreed to tighten border controls and house hundreds of migrants. At the same time, Italy, Germany and France signed a joint document calling for a review of current EU rules on granting asylum and a “fair” distribution of migrants.
The paper admitted that the current migrant crisis has “clearly shown the limits and defects” of the rules on asylum and that they need to be re- assessed. Last night Tory MP Peter Bone, the former chairman of the All- Party Parliamentary Group on Human Trafficking, laid the blame firmly at the EU’s door.
He said: “The EU has undoubtedly contributed to this crisis.
“Years ago we warned that the EU’s freedom of movement rules allowed traffickers to move people across Europe unimpeded.
“But because Brussels was so wedded to the idea of freedom of movement it would do nothing about it. The only way to combat this crisis is to reinstate border controls.
“The Schengen system of passport- free borders means traffickers are driving people across the Continent to reach the countries of their choice.
“Freedom of movement has acted as a pull factor.
“If all the people claiming asylum knew they had to stay in the first EU country they reached as the rules state, they wouldn’t come.”
MigrationWatch deputy chairman Alp Mehmet, a former British ambassador to Iceland, said: “The Schengen arrangements have really exacerbated the whole problem of huge numbers of people looking for asylum and being able to effectively shop around. It means that once you have entered the EU you are able to go to any other Schengen country.
“We have people in Turkey, Libya, north Africa looking for a better way of life, not fleeing war- torn countries.
“They can move around until they find a country they want to settle in. They know they probably won’t be sent back home.”
MEP Steven Woolfe, Ukip’s migration spokesman, said: “The EU’s shambolic implementation of Schengen and its pursuit of vanity projects like the creation of a European army instead of helping poorer Mediterranean members secure their borders is a reason why Europe is facing its worst migration crisis
since the Second World War.” Ukip leader Nigel Farage added: “Schengen has now hit the buffers of the real world and is falling apart.”
And Tory MEP Daniel Hannan said: “The two pillars of European integration were Schengen and the euro.
“Both have now crumbled at the fi rst crisis.
“I’m not asking the Eurofanatics to apologise; I just want the rest of us to stop listening to them.”
British families and businessmen were trapped on Tuesday night for 14 hours on a Eurostar train which stopped two miles outside the Channel Tunnel when it was surrounded by migrants.
The crisis caused delays to six trains on Tuesday and two cancellations yesterday morning.
Fainted
Passengers on the worsthit train told of hearing people scrambling on the roof and trying to force doors open after the train came to a halt due to migrants on the tracks.
Then the train broke down and they had to endure hours without air conditioning and only dimmed lights.
As lavatories overfl owed and the heat rose, a pregnant woman became violently ill and fainted, leading to her desperate partner trying to smash the window to let in fresh air.
PR director Simon Gentry, 48, of London fi rm MWW, described the train as “very stinky and hot”.
He added: “While we waited in Calais the train manager told us he believed there were people moving around on top of the train.
“They had to turn the power off because there were people on the roof and the trains are powered by overhead lines.”