Brussels, 23/10/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 22 October, Slovenia asked the European Commission for help during the visit there of European Commissioner for Transport Violeta Bulc and European Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship Dimitris Avramopoulos. The leaders of several countries are due to meet in Brussels on Sunday 25 October for a mini-summit on the migration crisis in the Balkans. The goal of this mini-summit is to set out measures that are directly operational.
With Slovenia receiving over 10,000 migrants in a day, it decided to activate the EU's civil protection mechanism on 22 October, and the European Commission reported on 23 October that the Czech Republic had been the first country to provide equipment (such as tents and blankets).
The Commission also said that it was ready to help the Slovenian authorities and release fresh emergency aid in response to a formal request from Llubljana that the Commission is expecting soon, said Natasha Bertaud, the spokesperson for Avramopoulos.
The Commission said that Slovenia would receive €56 million from the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF) over the 2014-2020 period, and that €4 million in emergency aid had already been unlocked. The purpose of Bulc and Avramopoulos' visit to Slovenia was to look at the things that can be done by the mini-summit on 25 October, the Commission stated.
On Sunday, the leaders from Germany, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Greece, Croatia, Romania, Serbia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) will gather at the European Commission in Brussels for a meeting called in an unprecedented way by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. European Council President Donald Tusk and the president of the Council of the EU, Jean Asselborn, along with European Parliament President Martin Schulz and managers from Frontex and the European Asylum Support Office (EASO), and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Antonio Guterres have also replied that they will attend.
The goal of this meeting is to take immediate measures to remedy the pressure being experienced by certain member states - such as Slovenia, which is seeing thousands of migrants arriving since Hungary closed its border points with Croatia. The flow of migrants is equally abundant on the Greek island of Lesbos, according to French news agency AFP, with over 8-10,000 arrivals per day.
Greece is still experiencing difficulties in setting up hotspots for migrant registration and no refugees have thus far been relocated from Greece to another member state. Italy alone has been able to have refugees leave - particularly for Sweden or Finland (86 refugees have thus far been relocated from Italy, according to Commission figures.) However, the Commission says that all member states are slow in formulating their commitments, with nine countries having so far committed to hosting 853 refugees from Italy and Greece. The extraordinary meeting of justice and home affairs ministers on 9 November will also serve for clarification as to why application of the decisions adopted is so slow. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)