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EU leaders face calls to bridge divide on migrants

17 December 2015, 21:58 CET
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EU leaders face calls to bridge divide on migrants

Martin Schulz - Photo © European Union 2015 - EU Council

(BRUSSELS) - European leaders holding a year-end summit on Thursday were urged to bury their differences over the migration crisis and restore the security of the 28-nation EU's crumbling borders.

Faced with an influx this year of nearly one million refugees and migrants, European countries are still struggling to cope with the continent's biggest migration crisis since World War II despite a slew of emergency summits.

The lack of a clear plan has led to fears for Europe's cherished Schengen passport-free area as nations restore internal border controls to stem the tide of humanity.

"The EU's division on this issue is visible to everyone," European Parliament President Martin Schulz told reporters as the bloc's presidents and prime ministers arrived for the summit in Brussels.

"We must find a way to overcome this division."

Despite months of haggling, only two of 11 migrant "hotspots" or reception centres have been set up in Greece and Italy, while only around 200 asylum seekers out of a proposed 160,000 have been relocated from those frontline states to other EU nations.

The EU-staffed reception centres determine who among the new arrivals are eligible for admissions as refugees and who should be deported as economic migrants.

The member states are also trying to agree on a plan to deploy a pan-European border and coastguard force to protect the bloc's external sea and land borders.

Poland is one of several countries reluctant to support the plan over concerns over its sovereign right to patrol its own borders.

"We urgently need success and solutions," said Schulz, who is German. "The summit must understand that Europe only advances if we regain confidence."

Germany, the top destination for the migrants as Europe's most dynamic economy, has led the calls for Europeans to admit people in distress and share the burden more evenly.

But eastern European countries have been among the most reluctant to admit asylum seekers as they face a populist anti-migrant backlash.

The full gathering of leaders in Brussels followed a mini-summit grouping German Chancellor Angela Merkel and 10 other EU leaders who met to review a November 29 migrant cooperation deal with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

"We see that the influx from Turkey to Greece is diminishing insufficiently," Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said. "It must go down faster now, get closer to zero."

- 'Slight reduction' -

Around 4,000 people have been landing daily this month in Greece from Turkey, the main launchpad for migrant crossings to Europe, according to a report from Luxembourg, which currently holds the EU's presidency.

That marks only "a slight reduction" from November, when 5,000 to 6,000 people were arriving each day, the report said, adding it was not clear that the decline was related to the EU-Turkish deal to curb the migrant flow to Europe.

Under their November deal, EU leaders pledged three billion euros ($3.2 billion) in aid to help improve the lot of the more than two million Syrian refugees sheltering on Turkish soil.

In exchange, Turkey agreed to try to limit the numbers travelling to Europe and tackle human smugglers who profit from their desperate journeys.

Rutte said the bloc would be willing to help resettle many of the Syrian refugees in Turkey but only if Ankara helps stop the migrant influx to Europe.

Greece, which has been hit with the worst of the refugee crisis as well as the worst of the financial crisis in Europe, sought more cooperation with Turkey.

"It's time for more cooperation in order to decrease the migrant flows and especially the non-refugee flows," leftist Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said.

"We had a constructive discussion today also with the prime minister of Turkey and we have to work harder in this direction."

The summit's draft conclusions stress that implementation of the multi-pronged migration strategy developed over the last months "is insufficient and has to be speeded up," according to a copy obtained by AFP.

European Council, 17-18/12/2015, agenda and briefing


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