European Parliament backs Juncker′s refugee plans

European lawmakers have backed European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker's proposals for coping with a massive influx of migrants. The vast majority of the people on the move have been heading for Germany.

Members of the European Parliament meeting in Strasbourg on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to support Juncker's proposals, with 432 voting in favor of the non-binding resolution and just 142 against, with 57 abstentions.

A statement posted on the European Parliament's website said the lawmakers backed the Commission's proposal to relocate 120,000 asylum seekers from Italy, Greece and Hungary. This came a day after it backed an emergency proposal for relocating 40,000 asylum seekers.

It also said that a majority of lawmakers believed that the bloc's "Dublin rules," which determine in which member state any given migrant is required to register, should be amended through a "fair, compulsory allocation key" taking into account "the integration prospects and the specific cases and needs of asylum seekers themselves."

The MEPs also expressed support for the idea of drawing up a common EU list of safe countries of origin and a compulsory resettlement plan under which members states would be required to take in refugees from third countries.

Read more: European Parliament backs Juncker′s refugee plans | News | DW.COM | 10.09.2015

Refugee Crisis 2015: Could Syrians Help Europe's Aging Population Problem? - by Lydia Tomkiw

European countries have some of the world's most rapidly aging populations, meaning they need more young people to replace retiring workers. As record numbers of refugees continue to try to enter the European Union from conflict-ridden and repressive states, including Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Eritrea, officials said some EU states could benefit from the influx of young refugees and families amid a looming demographic crisis. Here’s a look at the current population issues facing Europe.

The overall fertility rate, the average number of children a woman is expected to have over her childbearing years, has fallen across Europe since the mid-1960s, according to Eurostat. Europeans have been having fewer children and waiting until later in life to have them. This means that in order to keep the population across the continent constant, a fertility rate of 2.1, called the replacement level, is needed. As of 2013, the EU had a rate of 1.55.

While overall the 506 million population of the EU has shown growth, with an increase of 1.3 million people from 2014, the populations of 12 states have declined and the union faces an increasing population of people over 65 in every member state, according to Eurostat. The number of working-age people in the EU has been shrinking compared with those retiring.

The countries with the lowest fertility rates were Portugal at 1.21, Spain at 1.27 and Poland at 1.29. The countries with the highest rates were Sweden at 1.89, Ireland at 1.96 and France at 1.99.

Read more: Refugee Crisis 2015: Could Syrians Help Europe's Aging Population Problem?

Britain, France join Germany in showing solidarity with migrants - by Frank Zeller

Britain and France Monday joined Germany in pledging to accept tens of thousands of refugees as Europe's record influx of people fleeing war and misery sparked warnings that one Greek migrant chokepoint was "on the verge of explosion".

European leaders are scrambling for solutions as bloody conflicts in Syria, Iraq and beyond send hundreds of thousands of desperate people on dangerous voyages through the Balkans and across the Mediterranean to the 28-nation EU.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country is Europe's top refugee destination, hailed the warm welcome her citizens gave to 20,000 asylum-seekers who streamed across its southern borders on weekend trains, and pledged billions more in money to house them.

Signalling that the huge wave of arrivals marked a milestone for Europe's biggest economy, she said that "what we are experiencing now is something that will ... change our country in coming years". 

"We want the change to be positive, and we believe we can accomplish that," she said.

As EU leaders stepped up efforts to tackle the historic crisis, France said it would take 24,000 more asylum-seekers under a European plan to relocate 120,000 refugees from hard-hit frontline countries.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said his country would also do more, taking in 20,000 Syrian refugees from overflowing camps near the war-torn country's borders over the next five years.

Across the Atlantic, Canada's Quebec province pledged to welcome 3,650 Syrian refugees this year.

Read more: Britain, France join Germany in showing solidarity with migrants - Yahoo News

EU Presidency: President EU Commission should be elected by popular EU-wide vote say 85.71% polled

In the most recent EU-Digest Poll where the question was asked if the EU president of rthe EU Commission should be appointed by the EU Parliament (as it is today), or elected by popular EU-wide vote,  a large majority 85.71% polled said said they preferred a popular EU-wide vote. (see insert).

This month poll deals with the possible reasons for the huge migrant stream coming into the EU from the Middle East and Northern Africa.

EU-Digest

Europe’s multi-layered hypocrisy on refugees or "Kettle (US) calling the Pot (EU) black" ? - by Anne Applebaum

Picking apart the layers of irony and hypocrisy that surround the European refugee crisis is like peeling an onion without a knife. At a train station in southern Moravia, Czech police pulled 200 refugees off a train and marked numbers on their arms. On its eastern border, Hungary is building a barbed-wire fence to keep out refugees, remarkably like the barbed wire “iron curtain” that once marked its western border. Choose whatever image you want — ships full of Jews being sent back to Nazi Europe, refugees furtively negotiating with smugglers at a bar in Casablanca — and it now has a modern twist.

Sun, a British tabloid, has spent a decade railing against immigrants of all kinds. Not long ago, it told the British prime minister to “Draw a Red Line on Immigration — Or Else.” Now, after the publication of photographs of a dead Syrian toddler washed up on a Turkish beach, it wants him to “Deal With the Worst Crisis Facing Europe Since WW2.”

 Having just declared that there was no point in accepting “more and more refugees,” poor David Cameron has now declared that, actually, Britain would accept more and more refugees. His aides hurriedly explained that “he had not seen the photographs” when he made the original statement.

More layers of hypocrisy: Although the photographs are indeed terrible, they aren’t actually telling us anything new. Refugees have been crossing the Mediterranean for months. Hundreds have died. Also, if we are disturbed by a dead child on a beach, why aren’t we disturbed by another dead child in a bombed-out house in Aleppo, Syria? What’s the distinction?

Even now, almost all of the slogans being bandied about as “solutions” are based on false assumptions. Nations should accept real refugees but not economic migrants? For one, it’s rarely easy to tell the difference. More to the point, the number of potentially “legitimate” refugees is staggeringly high.

As of July, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees had registered more than 4 million Syrian refugees, of whom well over a million are in Turkey and 1.5 million are in Lebanon, a country of only 4.8 million people. That’s not counting Iraqis, Libyans, Afghans and others who have equally suffered political or religious persecution, or even the millions of displaced Syrians still in Syria. Exactly how many of them will Europe take.

Note EU-Digest : A typical case of "the kettle calling the pot black". No one writes or talks about the fact that this whole migrant drama is the result of  a totally defunct US Middle East policy, in which they dragged, or better even, forced Europe to follow ". If only Europe had some independent political leaders with the courage to tell the US to "go and take a hike." Unfortunately most of our European politicians are not looking out for Europe where it counts. 

Also click here for additional information on the above issue.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-crisis-on-europes-shores/2015/09/04/2fb38864-5319-11e5-933e-7d06c647a395_story.html

The Netherlands: More Netherlands residents providing refugee assistance - by Janene Van Jaarsveldt

More and more Dutch people are opening their hearts to refugees and offering help where they can. The central agency for asylum seekers in the Netherlands, the COA, have so many volunteers reporting that they can hardly keep up.

Telephone operators at the COA are so overwhelmed that the agency has asked people to rather report via an online contact form, instead of calling, NOS reports. “The waiting time is too long”, a spokesperson said to the broadcaster. “And it would be a shame if people’s ideas just lie there and aren’t heard.”

Refugee foundation Vluchtelingenwerk currently have about 8 thousand volunteers registered with them.

That’s about as much as when the war in Yugoslavia led to a record number of volunteers in the 90’s.
When the temporary asylum centers opened in the IJsselhallen in Zwolle this summer, about 400 volunteers showed up offering, for example, to run errands or provide a meal.

Private initiatives are also popping up. A Facebook campaign called “Because We Carry” is collecting baby slings to donate to the many refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos. “Here mothers have to walk 70 kilometers with their young children to get help. That’s hard if youre already exhausted after the boat trip, but it’s even harder if you’re also carrying children in your arms.”

Another popular initiative on Facebook is the page “Ik ben een gastgezin voor een vluchteling“, or “I am a hos family for a refugee” in English. More than 15 thousand people have already reported on this page. The term “host family” in the group name does not mean that the people are taking in refugees, but instead offering support and help with the asylum application process.

Read more: More Netherlands residents providing refugee assistance - NL Times

Eastern Europe and Refugees: Fighting the wrong battle: Central Europe’s crisis is one of liberal democracy, not migration - Michal Simecka and Benjamin Tallis

The hostile response of central and eastern European heads of states to the prospect of accepting Syrian refugees is emblematic of a wider problem of democracy and liberalism in these countries.

When the European Commission unveiled its plan for binding refugee resettlement quotas in April 2015, few had expected the governments of ex-communist Member States - which have no Middle Eastern or African immigrant communities to speak of - to warmly embrace the scheme.

However, the intensity, hysteria and hypocrisy of the anti-migrant backlash shocked many, including some in the Visegrad countries themselves. Political cowardice and popular mistrust of supposedly liberal elites has allowed poisonous rhetoric directed at migrants to dominate, which risks political isolation and hinders common European action to address the crisis.
 
Encouragingly, counter-currents of resistance to the xenophobic rhetoric and callous political expediency are starting to emerge in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Meanwhile, pressure is mounting on the Visegrad governments, meeting in Prague for an emergency summit on Friday, as it becomes increasingly clear that their approach is not only out of line with Europe's moral responsibilities, but also out of line with key European states such as Germany and France.

However, these belated, weak and ineffective responses are symptomatic of deeper social and political problems in the Visegrad countries (Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary). The migration crisis has exposed another crisis – of liberal democracy in post-communist societies.

It is regrettable - indeed "scandalous", as French foreign minister Laurent Fabius put it – that on one of the few issues on which the Visegrad countries have made their collective voice heard, it contradicts European values and the ethos of the EU. Given the region’s history it is particularly concerning that Central Europeans are currently part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

Note EU-Digest: Sad and deplorable to see how some of our own EU member states in Eastern Europe like Hungary and Poland are reacting to efforts being undertaken to come to a common solution to solve the avalanche of Middle Eastern refugees by a system of proportional distribution of these refugees around the EU. With an aging population and a lack of qualified workers this migration flow  actually be a blessing in disguise for the EU.

Read more: Fighting the wrong battle: Central Europe’s crisis is one of liberal democracy, not migration | openDemocracy