EU leaders discuss plans to tighten border security, manage migrants
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EUROPEAN Union leaders met yesterday to consider sending hundreds of guards to its borders with the western Balkans, as well as deploying more ships off Greece, as the bloc seeks to balance Germany’s welcome for refugees with tougher security measures.
Central and eastern European leaders meeting in Brussels might agree to send 400 border guards and set up new checkpoints if the EU’s frontier states drop their policy of giving arrivals passage to other countries, according to a draft statement that must still be agreed.
“We commit to immediately increase our efforts to manage our borders,” the draft said, which, if formalized, would be a 16-point plan and the latest step in drawing up a common approach to dealing with the thousands of migrants streaming into the EU every day from the Middle East, North Africa and Afghanistan.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU’s chief executive, has called leaders of Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia, plus refugee organizations involved, to attend the meeting in Brussels.
Two weeks after a full EU summit, the meeting was sought by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, diplomats said.
Many saw it as an attempt by Juncker and Merkel to raise pressure on central and southeast European states to coordinate among themselves in managing the migration flow in a more humane way and end a series of unilateral actions.
“Every day counts,” Juncker said yesterday in an interview in German weekly newspaper Bild am Sonntag.
“Otherwise we will soon see families in cold rivers in the Balkans perish miserably.”
Still, some EU lawmakers in Britain and France have complained that all states should be there for the meeting — scheduled for 4pm in Brussels — and that France’s absence in particular could limit progress on a plan.
More than 680,000 migrants and refugees have crossed to Europe by sea so far this year, fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, according to the International Organization for Migration.
Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania said they will close their borders if Germany or other countries shut the door on refugees, warning they will not let the Balkan region become a “buffer zone” for stranded migrants.
Hungary’s decision to close its border with Serbia and Croatia has prompted others to follow, stranding tens of thousands in dire conditions as temperatures drop, though Serbia’s Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic has repeatedly said Serbia “will not build walls” to prevent entry of refugees.
Over the past nine days, the migrant route has shifted west to Hungary’s neighbor Slovenia where more than 62,000 migrants have arrived, with some 14,000 still passing through the country yesterday.
Many more are coming from Croatia, which has already seen about 230,000 migrants pass through since mid-September.
“The challenge now is to slow down the flow of migration and to bring external borders under control,” Juncker told Bild.
“We must also make it clear that people who arrive at our borders who are not looking for international protection have no right to enter the EU.”
In the draft statement, the leaders seek to speed up repatriations of people from South Asia whose asylum requests are rejected because they are simply seeking a better life and not fleeing war or oppression.
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