European leaders were last night set to agree on a €3 billion increase in funds to tackle the refugee crisis, a day after home affairs ministers agreed to a controversial plan to relocate 120,000 migrants through mandatory quotas.
At an informal meeting of heads of State and government in Brussels, leaders discussed a €1 billion increase in funds to the United Nations refugee agency and World Food programme and a “substantial increase” in funds to Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, which host about 2.2 million Syrian refugees.
According to a leaked draft of the summit’s conclusions, discussions also centred on the stepping up of efforts to identify, register and fingerprint asylum seekers, a strengthening of border controls and an additional €600 million for Frontex and Europol to “tackle the dramatic situation at our external borders”.
Speaking to journalists ahead of the meeting, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said the summit had to look to the future after the “crucial decisions” taken the previous day.
“You can’t just build a wall,” Dr Muscat said. “Walls don’t solve everything. What are we going to do, build a wall in the sea?”
The meeting came a day after four countries – Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Romania and Hungary, which recently completed an extensive border fence – voted against the mandatory relocation quotas.
The Slovak government has since threatened to take court action but the other three have indicated they will accept the plan.
“Our first duty is to save lives and to do that we have to manage the system,” Dr Muscat said.
“The system cannot be managed by any one country but on a European and even global level.”
He said more long-term decisions would have to be taken at the Valletta summit in November, which will include European countries and key African partners.
European Council president Donald Tusk said there were “millions of potential refugees trying to reach Europe, not thousands” and warned that the future of the Schengen agreement lay in the balance.
He said countries such as Turkey, Jordan and Egypt were looking to Europe for help to solve the refugee crisis rather than thinking of how to help Europe. “It is likely that more refugees towards Europe will flow through their countries, not less. Especially since almost all of them feel invited to Europe.”
The Council will next meet on October 8, when discussions are expected to focus on reforms to the contentious Dublin II system, under which asylum seekers must register in the first EU country they enter.
Meanwhile, the European Commission announced yesterday that it had instituted infringement procedures against Malta and 18 other EU member states for failing to implement common asylum procedures.
Speaking at a press conference, Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said: “Normally we do not inform the public about such infringement procedures but we had to show that we are insisting on the necessity of the same rules being applied everywhere in Europe.”
Malta received a letter of formal notice, the first stage of infringement procedures, for failing to inform the Commission of measures to transpose the Asylum Procedures Directive and the Reception Conditions Directive into national law, which it was obliged to do by July 20.
The two directives set clearer rules on how to apply for asylum and establish common minimum standards for the reception of applicants for international protection across all member states.
The government now has two months to respond to the Commission, and failure to do so could eventually lead to the case being referred to the European Court of Justice.