EU bills Britain for migrant crisis
BRITAIN faces paying tens of millions more to the European Union to fund a controversial new scheme to deal with the migrant crisis on the continent, it emerged last night.
Jean-Claude Juncker demanded that countries including Britain “put their money where your mouth is” as he announced the EU will spend an extra €1.7 billion (£1.25 billion) on emergency support to European countries, EU police officers and humanitarian aid.
Britain faces having to pay more than £150 million to the EU despite repeatedly making it clear it does not wish to take part in the resettlement programme, according to an analysis by Open Europe, the think tank.
The demand for extra funds was made less than 24 hours after a major split emerged in the EU as Germany and other countries forced eastern European nations to accept thousands of migrants against their wishes.
European leaders were in crisis talks last night over how to deal with the arrival of tens of thousands more migrants. Donald Tusk, the European Council president, told an emergency meeting that “mutual recriminations and misunderstandings” over the crisis could precipitate the EU’s collapse
Britain has refused to take part in the EU scheme with David Cameron instead choosing to offer asylum to 20,000 refugees living in camps on the Syrian border. Britain is already the second most generous nation in the world, after America, in helping fund the international aid effort.
The Prime Minister pledged a further £115 million to the UK’s direct scheme yesterday, taking Britain’s contribution to £1.1 billion. The proposed extra money to the EU would be on top of this.
The warning that Britain would have to pay extra was issued by Kristalina Georgieva, the EU budget commissioner, who said she would increase overall spending to its limit, “budgeting up to the margin and using emergency aid reserves to the maximum”. Mr Juncker, the European Commission president, said: “This is not the time for business as usual. I said it before: if you really want to help these people, you have to put your money where your mouth is.
“Provide us with the funds needed to combat this crisis.” But Downing Street sources said that the EU budget should not require extra funding if the current contributions are used efficiently.
EU leaders scrambled yesterday to save the Schengen system from collapse by announcing plans to deploy armed guards to man countries’ national borders ahead of an influx of “millions” more migrants.
The spending plans were announced hours after Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, used a visit to Brussels to demand the EU “reflect the pain its member states are going through”.
“The Prime Minister and the Chancellor have a pretty clear view that at a time when most member states are having to make very difficult decisions about cutting their own public sector budgets and driving efficiencies through their own systems, it is simply not acceptable for an institution to simply go on doing things in the old way,” he said.
Mr Juncker said he would leave “no stone unturned” to find money in existing budgets but warned: “If the EU budget cannot give those funds because of strict rules, then we have to appeal to the member states to make additional national contributions.”
Increasing the overall budget would require a vote. A UK official said Britain would study proposals put forward by the European Commission to increase the budget. The priority must be to find money from elsewhere, he said.
Arriving at an emergency summit in Brussels, Mr Cameron announced that
Britain’s direct aid spending to solve the crisis in North Africa would be increased by £115 million to £1.1 billion.
It includes £40 million for the World Food Programme, amid fears of a hunger crisis in refugee camps.
“We must make sure that people in refugee camps are properly fed, and looked after, not least to help them but also to stop people wanting to make or thinking of making this very, very difficult and very dangerous journey to Europe,” he said.
Mr Tusk said that millions more asylum seekers would try to reach Europe after being “invited” in. The continent needed to restore its borders or see the 30-year old free movement zone disintegrate, he said.
“Conflicts in the Middle East will not end any time soon. Today we are talking about millions of potential refugees trying to reach Europe, not thousands,” Mr Tusk said.
“It is likely that more refugees will flow towards Europe, not less, especially as almost all of them feel invited to Europe.
“In light of this the most urgent question we should ask ourselves tonight is how to regain control of our external borders, otherwise it doesn’t make any sense to even speak about common migration policy.
“What is at stake is also the future of Schengen, the sense of order in Europe and the common European spirit.”
In recent weeks border controls have been re-imposed in Denmark, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Norway and Slovenia in an attempt to halt the migrant influx. Dimitris Avramopoulos, the EU’s migration commissioner, announced plans to deploy “rapid border intervention teams” to states facing chaos on their borders that request help. The units are comprised of armed border guards from member states wearing blue arm bands with the EU logo.
The EU is also developing plans for a permanent common coast and border guard, he said.
Yesterday European leaders met in a toxic atmosphere after the relocation plan to move migrants from Italy and Greece to other countries was pushed through under a qualified majority vote against the wishes of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia.
Hungarian diplomats insisted the plan would never work because migrants would simply move, and European voters would be horrified at the sight of a “family with kids in arms being returned in front of the cameras”.
“‘Mohammed, here is your flight to Stuttgart. Ahmed, here is your flight to Bucharest.’ Will Ahmed be happy? Two hours later he will be on the run to Germany,” an official said.
“It has been designed in buildings that have never seen what is going on in the ground. The house is burning and we plan to submit legislation in three months’ time.”
Poland’s prime minister, Ewa Kopacz, faced an incensed reaction at home after she split from her longstanding allies in the Visegrad bloc of eastern European states to vote for the plan. Elections take place in a month and immigration will be centre stage. is a member of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) and we subscribe to its Editors’ Code of Practice. If you have a complaint about editorial content, please visit