After an exhausting leaders’ meeting on Sunday, just after midnight,
Jean-Claude Juncker announced that the leaders agreed in Brussels on a
17-point plan of operational measures.
These start with a permanent
exchange of information, including submitting joint needs assessments
for EU support within 24 hours, going to increasing Greece’s reception
capacity to 30,000 places by the end of the year, and to support UNHCR
to provide rent subsidies and host family programmes for at least 20,000
more – a pre-condition to make the emergency relocation scheme work;
Financial support for Greece and UNHCR is expected.
Attending the leaders’ meeting were the Heads of State or Government
of Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of
Macedonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia.
The approved plan asks that Balkan and eastern European countries
should stop allowing asylum seekers to pass through to other
neighbouring countries without first securing agreement from those
neighbours.
Countries should thus be asked to stop waving through
migrants without the agreement of their neighbours. The question is how
this could be done ensured on the ground, beyond the political
declarations of good will and solidarity.
Some participants were very pessimistic. The EU will “start falling
apart” if it fails to take concrete action to tackle the refugee crisis
within the next few weeks, the Slovenian prime minister, Miro Cerar,
warned. Slovenia, a country of 2 million people, has seen the arrival of
more than 60,000 refugees in recent days.
At the press conference following the meeting, Jean-Claude Juncker
and Angela Merkel did not give details how the transition, the flow of
people, will be managed, and how will migrants be spread and divided
among the EU member states “with dignity” and in a “humane manner”
.
The final statement also reconfirmed the principle “that a country
may refuse entry to third-country nationals who, when presenting
themselves at border crossing points, do not confirm a wish to apply for
international protection” — meaning that those who do not declare the
intention to apply for the status of a refugee could be refused entry
immediately at the border.
The EU has already dedicated four summits to migration since the
summer but many member states are lagging behind on their promises.
Only around 80 asylum seekers from Italy out of a target total of
160,000 have so far been relocated. Greece has yet to dispatch any.
The
President of the European Council, the Luxembourg Presidency of the
Council of the EU and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
also took part.
Read more: Juncker’s migration summit leads to 17-point plan
