Brussels, 14/03/2016 (Agence Europe) - During his visit to Athens on Friday 11 March, Frédéric Vallier, secretary general of the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR), proposed that, to help the cities and regions that are having to face the problem of managing the influx of refugees, zero interest rate loans from the EIB be made available, application of the stability pact be less stringent and specific, temporary euro-bonds be introduced to finance the resettlement of refugees.
When contacted by EUROPE, Vallier made clear immediately that these proposals had not yet been approved by the members of the CEMR. He had been seeking to stimulate the debate on the migration crisis. “The problem is that we're getting the scale wrong”, he said. “In the EU there are some 100,000 regional and local authorities. If half of these took one or two refugee families, we could take in close to a million refugees.” The real problem is the lack of funding. He noted that, in Germany, taking in refugees cost municipalities around €15 billion in 2015, €10 billion of which came directly from municipal budgets, the other €5 billion being provided by the Länder and the federal authorities.
He proposes that zero-rate loans be made available from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to help those municipalities which are considering hosting refugees to build housing for them. Vallier suggests that these loans could be granted not just for housing for refugees but also for local residents. Thus, with pressure on housing being very high in some cities, tensions on the part of local residents could be avoided.
Greater flexibility seems to him to be simple common sense. In his view, the cities having to deal with the migratory flows, particularly the cities in Greece, should not be required to meet all the criteria of the stability pact, “to release the stranglehold”.
Vallier also set out two further proposals: introducing a tax on oil products to increase the EU's own resources - a proposal briefly championed by German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaüble in January - and the creation of a support network for local and regional authorities which take in refugees, with a national point of contact being appointed to which all queries could be directed and the publication of guidance.
The European Commission announced last year that structural and investment funding could be re-programmed to address the crisis (see EUROPE 11433). This would not be a good move, according to Vallier, who sees in it a distortion of the objectives of cohesion policy. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)