Young refugees with cuddly toys in hand arrive at the main train station in Munich, Germany
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Europe is facing a defining moment tackling the largest influx of refugees since World War II as diverging paths for handling the crisis came into focus across the region.
“I’ve rarely held such an innermost conviction that this is a task that will decide whether Europe is accepted as a continent of values,” Merkel said yesterday after meeting Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Loefven in Berlin. “On this issue where the whole world’s eyes are upon us, we can’t just say Syria is too far away, we won’t deal with it.”
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said earlier in the day that providing 6 billion euros (USD6.7 billion) in added funds for refugees is an “absolute priority.” That contrasted with Istvan Simicsko, named Hungary’s defense minister on Monday, who said his country will devote more resources to speeding up the fortification of a razor-wire border fence.
The two countries are indicative of a wider divide within the European Union, with Germany among nations calling for greater burden sharing by introducing refugee quotas across the 28-member bloc, and others such as Hungary arguing that doing so will simply encourage more migrants to come. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is taking a get-tough approach by building the fence, beefing up the number of soldiers along the border and pushing through stricter laws.
Hungary plans to deploy as many as 4,000 soldiers to complete construction of the sturdier fence on the country’s border with Serbia should parliament approve the measure, Simicsko told reporters in Budapest, calling the situation “extremely grave.”
Germany – which estimates that 800,000 migrants will enter the country in 2015, nearly four times last year’s figure – is backing a European Commission plan that will be announced today. Jean-Claude Juncker, the commission’s president, will propose relocating 120,000 migrants in Italy, Greece and Hungary to countries throughout the EU, according to an EU official who asked not to be identified discussing plans that are not yet public.
The list of nations deemed free of political persecution to which people can be safely returned will expand to include EU candidate countries in the western Balkans and Turkey, a move meant to speed up the deportation of those unlikely to get asylum, the person said.
“Sweden and Germany are of the opinion that we need binding quotas, binding numbers of refugees who have a right to asylum and who are then fairly distributed across EU member states based on certain principles,” Merkel said. “Unfortunately, we’re far off from that – and therefore we’re of the opinion that something has to change here.”
The U.K., Ireland and Denmark won’t be included in Juncker’s proposal because they have an opt-out on immigration policy. U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, who pledged on Monday to take 20,000 refugees over five years, will accept people directly from camps in the Middle East instead of those already in Europe. Cameron argues his plan will make the process more orderly and cut down on human trafficking and deaths.
Austria, which is expecting as many as 80,000 asylum requests this year, is one of the proponents of a quota system. Chancellor Werner Faymann met Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and Czech Premier Bohuslav Sobotka in Bratislava on Monday to discuss the plan, which the eastern European leaders oppose.
“There are tough discussions, and I experienced some yesterday,” Faymann told journalists in Vienna yesterday. “It’s unacceptable for the European Union that some countries, just because they aren’t personally affected to the same extent, don’t contribute to a common solution.” Patrick Donahue, Edith Balazs and Alexander Weber, Bloomberg
Obama administration weighs steps to help crisis
The Obama administration says it is “actively considering” ways to be more responsive to the global migrant crisis, including refugee resettlement. Peter Boogaard, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said the United States is in contact with countries in the Middle East and Europe grappling with the influx of more than 340,000 people from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. He did not elaborate on specific measures, but said they included “refugee resettlement.” He noted that the U.S. has provided over USD4 billion in humanitarian assistance since the Syrian crisis began, and over $1 billion in assistance this year. On Monday, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton called in an Associated Press interview for a “concerted global effort” to assist the refugees.
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