On Tuesday 19 January, the European Commission and the European Parliament condemned the humanitarian situation on the EU’s external borders, particularly migrants’ living conditions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where, said Ylva Johansson, the Commissioner for Home Affairs, the “authorities have not acted responsibly”.
In the ongoing debate on the hotspots on the EU’s external borders, such as Greece and the Canary Islands, where the number of irregular arrivals increased by 1,000% in 2020, the situation on the border between Bosnia and Croatia has particularly attracted the attention of MEPs and the Commission.
In response to demands from MEPs, including members of the Greens/EFA group, that migrants from Bosnia and Herzegovina be relocated to Member States, the Commissioner was forced to justify her decision, made at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, to encourage the Bosnian authorities to find more sustainable accommodation solutions for migrants.
After the fire on 23 December in the Lipa camp, more than 1,000 people had to be temporarily relocated to makeshift shelters and tents (900 people are still in temporary tents) while there is a more suitable centre - the Bira camp, closed by the authorities in September 2020 - “a few kilometres” away, the Commissioner said.
Johansson said that leaving these individuals without a more sustainable solution “damages the reputation” of the country, which is also a candidate for membership and receives EU funds to deal with situations of this nature. Bosnia and Herzegovina, which received further aid of €3.5 million in January, needs to show that it “is capable of managing flows of migrants”.
The Commissioner rejected accusations by some MEPs that nothing had changed with regard to Greece, however. The situation, though still serious, has improved, the Commissioner said, and the Greek islands are now home to just 15,000 migrants, whereas there were still 42,000 at the end of 2019.
In the parliamentary chamber, a number of MEPs called for an end to refoulement, a practice that Croatia, Greece and the Frontex agency in particular are accused of carrying out, and for an end to policies that externalise migration through EU cooperation with the Libyan and Turkish coastguards, a practice that was condemned by Isabel Santos (S&D, Portugal), amongst others. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)