Brussels, 27/10/2015 (Agence Europe) - Having made their promises to respond to migration crisis, the member states should start about putting them into practice if they do not wish to see their situation, and mutual relations, get even worse.
This is the message sent out, on Tuesday 27 October, by the President of the European Commission and most of the political groups of the European Parliament, at a plenary session debate in Strasbourg on the results of the European Council 15 October (see EUROPE 11411) and of the mini-summit held on Sunday 25 October (EUROPE exceptionally published an article online) by Jean-Claude Juncker and the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, on the Balkans route.
Addressing the Parliament, Juncker referred to the latest measures taken on Sunday by 11 EU and non-EU leaders, such as the creation of 100,000 hosting places for refugees on the Balkans route, but also the commitments made by the Twenty-Eight on 23 September at another meeting on the migration challenge, which have not yet been honoured. It also flagged up the low level of budgetary commitments and the limits reached by the EU budget, which will provide around €10 billion to manage this crisis in 2015 and 2016. The fact that the European capitals have been in no hurry to respond to appeals for personnel by the European agencies Frontex and EASO, which asked the member states to help with the registration and identification of migrants arriving on the external borders of the EU, also came under fire. The slowness in the implementation of the relocation decisions of a total of 160,000 refugees was also criticised. “The member states are moving too slowly, they should get running”, Jean-Claude Juncker joked before the MEPs.
The member states have still not responded to the appeal by Frontex for an additional 775 border guards, with just a handful of them having promised to deploy 326 officers to date. For EASO, just 145 people of the 374 requested have been pledged, said Juncker. “We urgently need experts” for migrant registration missions, he reiterated. The member states are also dragging their heels when it comes to appointing their liaison officers in Greece and Italy, a mechanism used to define, with the migrant in question and the member state of departure (Greece or Italy), the country to which the migrant will be relocated. So far, just three member states have appointed their liaison officers for Greece and eight for Italy. Just nine member states have also pledged to host 700 refugees (out of 160,000).
EU “not in good shape”
Commenting more specifically on the results of the minisummit of 25 October on the Balkans route, Juncker also lamented the fact that it had been necessary to convene a meeting to get the heads of state or government of these countries to talk to each other and move away from invective, whilst tensions between Slovenia, Croatia and Hungary, but also Germany and Austria, have multiplied as a result of the endless arrivals of thousands of migrants in the space of just a few days. Acknowledging that the discussions at this meeting were quite tense at times, the President of the Commission said that it was astonishing “that we have had to convince the member states to discuss refugee movements among themselves”. “This is another time the EU has not been in good shape”, he regretted.
The President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, also said that the situation was loaded with challenges for the unity of the EU and for the Schengen free-movement area. “And what is even more dangerous”, Tusk went on, is that this crisis has the potential to “create tectonic shifts in the European political landscape”, which will not be “for the better”. He stressed that it is “vital to ensure the unity of our member states and our European institutions (…). Otherwise, I do not want to think about the alternative”, he warned.
These concerns were shared by most of the political groups, the EPP also stressing the need for the member states to implement their commitments. “Last Sunday, it became clear that the real leader of Europe is the European Commission”, commented German MEP Manfred Weber. “It's the member states who are not doing their bit” and it is “now up to them to do what they promised to do”, he stressed.
First concrete decisions after minisummit of 25 October
On 27 October, the Commission announced that it had taken note of the first results following the mini-summit on the Balkans route. At this meeting, which lasted more than seven hours, the leaders of 11 EU countries (Austria, Germany, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia and Romania) and non-EU countries (Serbia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Albania) decided that they would be in touch once a week to inform each other of developments with the flows of migrants, under the aegis of the Commission. An initial 'teleconference' will be held on Thursday 29 October. Each of these countries has also appointed a person to serve as national point of contact.
Adopting a 17-point action plan, these leaders also undertook to set in place, with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, 100,000 hosting places for refugees on the Balkans route, including 50,000 in Greece. The idea is both humanitarian - these people cannot be allowed to sleep outside without food or assistance, particularly with winter coming - and strategic, as these hosting sites will make it possible to settle refugees in one place and therefore make it easier to manage movements between the member states. Greece agreed to implement 30,000 places this year (hotels and empty housing will be requisitioned), but the financing has not been clarified. On Monday 26 October, the Commission made further emergency aid of €5.9 million available to Greece. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)