‘Rejection of refugee quotas unacceptable’
Hope for France freeze
BRUSSELS, Jan 24, (Agencies): The EU’s migration commissioner has warned it would be “unacceptable” for countries to refuse proposed refugee sharing quotas, setting up a fresh row with eastern European states that oppose the plan.
Dimitris Avramopoulos told AFP in an interview that agreement on quotas is “reachable” by a June deadline — despite longstanding opposition from eastern states.
EU interior ministers meet in Sofia on Thursday to discuss asylum reforms that have been blocked for over a year because of disagreement over migrant quotas that would kick in case of a new crisis.
Former communist countries including Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic vehemently oppose compulsory quotas, arguing they can meet their obligations by contributing funds to overburdened Italy and Greece, the EU entry point for most migrants.
“This is unacceptable,” Avramopoulos, who is Greece’s EU commissioner, said when asked if a settlement could emerge by June in which some member states refuse to admit refugees.
“It is a shared responsibility. All countries should be part of our policy to share the burden of this heavy pressure,” he added, dismissing the idea of making financial contributions to Italy and Greece as an “arbitrary interpretation” of solidarity.
Bulgarian officials have said it will be difficult to reach agreement on the topic by June, the deadline set by EU leaders — and the end of Sofia’s presidency of the bloc.
But Avramopoulos said: “Everything is reachable. What is a prerequisite is a strong political will to be shared by all member states.”
Avramopoulos
Migrants bid to reach France:
Cisse and Ibrahim have never seen snow before. After fleeing crisis-hit Libya by boat and making their way up Italy, the exhausted pair trudge in flimsy trainers along a pitchblack mountain trail in a night-time bid to reach France.
They are among hundreds of migrants trying their luck in Bardonecchia. The town is a skiers’ delight, but beyond the black run thrills and hot toddies lie the tracks of those braving dangerous snowy peaks to cross the border.
After a crackdown at the Ventimiglia coastal crossing, young men have begun arriving at the railway station here to attempt the Col de l’Echelle pass, which runs 16 kms (10 miles) between Bardonecchia and the first French town.
While controls along this route are strict in the summer months, it is closed to traffic in winter and rather than zealous police the biggest challenge facing the mainly African men is a freezing wind that buffets the 1,700 metre (5,600 feet) high pass.
“Word has been spreading among migrants for several months. But it’s extremely dangerous. The arrivals have become a daily tragedy!” said local teacher Silvia Massara, who helps distribute hot meals to those passing through.
Inside the station, tired youths wolf down plates of stew and rice handed out by volunteers from the Rainbow for Africa and Briser les Frontieres associations, as well as the Red Cross.
Those lucky enough to make it to the French side without getting caught are welcomed by locals offering warm hearths and hearts.
The Italians, meanwhile, do everything possible to convince the migrants to turn back before it is too late.
After surviving baking deserts, detention in Libyan prisons and perilous boat crossings in the Mediterranean, the migrants are shown pictures by volunteers of avalanches or fellow travellers who have lost limbs to frostbite.
Migration drops near zero in Czech:
The number of asylum seekers crossing the Czech Republic dropped in 2017 to negligible numbers, police said on Tuesday amid a presidential election in which illegal migration has become a hot topic.
Although the country was largely untouched by a 2015 influx into the European Union of over one million migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East Africa and Asia, fears of Muslim immigration have dominated the election debate.
Police said they detained 172 migrants in 2017 who sought to illegally transit the Czech Republic, mostly coming from Austria and heading onwards to neighbouring Germany. They were mainly from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
That compared with 2,294 detentions during the peak of 2015, and 511 in 2016. In separate data, the Interior Ministry said 116 people applied for asylum in January-November 2017, a tiny fraction of those doing so in west European countries.
Ex-communist central and eastern members of the EU with scant experience of non-Christian foreigners were the vanguard of a backlash against Germany’s decision in 2015 to open its doors to around a million mostly Muslim migrants.
They rebuffed an EU plan to distribute migrants among member states according to annual quotas, even though the vast bulk of migrants wanted to settle in the wealthier west rather than poorer east of the bloc.
In the event, the flow of migrants has largely dried up since borders were sealed along the migrants’ main overland Balkans corridor into the EU and Turkey stopped migrants taking boats across narrow sea channels to Greece.
Nevertheless, positions on migration may prove decisive in the Czech Republic’s closely contested presidential run-off on Jan 26-27 in which academic Jiri Drahos is challenging incumbent Milos Zeman.
Zeman’s re-election campaign has seized on immigration as its main theme with the slogan, “Stop immigration and Drahos. This country is ours.”
Dozens of pro-Zeman billboards and media adverts suggest Drahos would be weak on rejecting EU pressure on each member state to accept migrants according to the quota system.
Like Zeman and all parliamentary parties, Drahos has repeatedly insisted that he rejects the idea of quotas and that the bloc should better guard its external borders against incoming asylum seekers.
Opinion polls ahead of the run-off vote show the soft-spoken Drahos, who favours closer EU integration, is neck-and-neck or slightly ahead of Zeman, who has courted the far right by rejecting Muslim immigration.