The plan announced by European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker to deal with Europe’s refugee crisis should be supported by EU home affairs ministers at their meeting in Brussels tomorrow.
Mr Juncker is proposing that 160,000 mainly Syrian refugees already located in Europe – mainly in Greece, Hungary and Italy – should be relocated throughout the EU using a quota system based on the member state’s GDP, population, unemployment rate and asylum applications processed.
Malta is to be allocated 425 refugees, which we can surely absorb, while 60 per cent of the migrants will be sent to Germany, France and Spain.
Mr Juncker also promised to strengthen the EU’s common asylum system by proposing a larger and better funded border agency to deal with refugees as they arrive in Europe, and to review the Dublin regulations which state that displaced people must claim asylum in the first EU State they arrive in.
Mr Juncker’s plan also envisages a policy that will see economic migrants from safe countries sent back home once they do not qualify for asylum.
A common EU policy on migration based on solidarity is long overdue, and Italy and Malta have been insisting on this for too long. Now that Europe is facing its worst refugee crisis since World War II with hundreds of thousands fleeing conflict, a long-awaited integrated European approach to this problem could be in the pipeline.
Unfortunately, some EU governments sadly continue to bow to populist sentiments. The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary are not convinced about the need for mandatory refugee quotas, while Poland seems to have adopted an ambiguous position.
Britain, while ruling out any participation in Mr Juncker’s plan, has said it will take 20,000 Syrian refugees from camps in the Middle East over a five-year period, hardly showing the help expected from a big country. Germany and Sweden, on the other hand, have been exemplary in this crisis with both governments saying that all Syrian refugees fleeing the war are eligible to claim asylum in their countries.
The figure of 160,000 refugees that Mr Juncker is proposing for relocation might seem large but in reality represents 0.11 per cent of the total EU population and will not place undue burdens on the countries hosting them, especially if they are evenly spread out throughout the bloc. This figure, furthermore, pales into insignificance when compared to the 1.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, the 1.7 million in Lebanon (equal to 25 per cent of the population) and 623,000 in Jordan, all of who deserve the support of the international community.
Meanwhile, it would also be helpful if countries like the Gulf States, Iran and Russia accept a fair amount of refugees. The US has expressed its willingness to take in 10,000 additional Syrians.
In the long-term, however, the only way to stop the exodus of Syrian refugees is for the international community to redouble its efforts at finding a political solution.
It is also essential that the EU-African summit in Malta in November maps out a potential long-term strategy to provide safe access to asylum in transit countries, before the migrants embark on their dangerous journey.
A lot is at stake for Europe in this refugee crisis. A failure by the EU to agree to the principle of responsibility sharing could lead to the suspension of the Schengen agreement, which would be a giant step backwards for Europe.
At the height of the crisis, Ms Merkel stated: “If Europe fails on the question of refugees, its close connection with universal civil rights will be destroyed.”
Nobody wants this to be Europe’s legacy.