Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Commissioner Christos Stylianides, who travelled to Serbia at the weekend, said that the EU would increase its emergency aid for vulnerable refugees and migrants stuck in Serbia.
‘Vulnerable refugees, including young children, are still in need of assistance. We can't leave them to face the harsh winter conditions alone. We are stepping up our humanitarian assistance in Serbia bringing it to a total of €20 million. We will continue (… to meet the most urgent needs, in particular to ensure that centres are adequate for the winter,’ said the Commissioner in a press release issued at the end of his visit on Sunday 22 January.
He explained that this was the message he’d given the Serbian prime minister, Mr Vucic, and the labour, veteran jobs and social policy minister, A. Vulin, when he met them on his visit. The Commissioner visited a refugee centre at Krnjaca, near Belgrade.
Some 7,550 refugees and migrants have been trapped in Serbia since the Western Balkans route into the EU was closed in early 2016. Most of them are housed in heated official detention centres.
The Commissioner said the EU would continue to work closely with Serbian authorities and international humanitarian partners to ensure the centres are equipped for the winter.
A number of MEPs recently expressed great concern about the unacceptable fate of some 1,200 people living in makeshift shelters in temperatures of minus 15 degrees Celsius. They called for the EU to take action to save their lives (see EUROPE 11707). NGO Oxfam criticised the way the Serbian government is refusing to allocate any humanitarian aid outside its official reception centres.
Since the beginning of the crisis more than €44 million has been allocated by the European Commission to help Serbia cope with the refugee crisis, both through humanitarian aid and pre-accession assistance, making the EU the largest donor in this respect. The aid is to cover the needs of refugees at transit and reception points in sixteen official centres. The member states have also provided more than 246,000 items of emergency aid under the Civil Protection Mechanism in the form of heating, electricity generators, sleeping bags and survival blankets. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)