The European Commission this morning presented a new proposal for the sharing among member states of some 160,000 refugees who have arrived in Hungary, Greece and Italy.
In a passionate speech at the European Parliament, Commission President Jean Claude Junker said that he expected member states to agree by next week on how many refugees each and every country would take.
“This is compulsory,” Mr Junker said while warning against any kind of disagreement between member states.
“We don’t need any more poems and rhetoric. We need action as this is the most important thing at the time being. We are talking about human beings and not numbers. It’s time to act,” Mr Junker said.
The President of the commission announced a series of other measures aimed at tackling the current migration crisis.
These include a proposal for a permanent relocation mechanism of refugees and the development of the Frontex agency into a fully fledged EU coastguard.
Mr Junker also said that the EU should also prepare for a fundamental change in the Dublin II system which stipulates that asylum applications should be dealt with at the country where migrants arrived.
He said that it was high time that this also changed through a more fair system.
'EU needs to push international cooperation forward'
MEP Miriam Dalli, who is a member of the European Parliament’s migration committee, welcomed the fact that Mr Juncker had acknowledged the fact that the EU needed to be far stronger on the international stage.
“The EU needs to take a leading role and push forward international co-operation to address at source the refugee crisis and the migration issue. I found the proposal by the Commission to prepare a list of safe countries of origin without removing aslyum rights an interesting one,” Dr Dalli said.
She insisted that a long-term initiatives were needed and not patch-work solutions. “We need European solution but also international solutions. After all this is not an issue that the EU can solve on its own. The relocation of people from on EU country to the other, with the participation of all EU states, is just one measure that can help us start seriously managing the issue at hand,” she said.
Dr Dalli emphasised that volontary mechanisms did not work. “Experience shows that voluntary mechanisms do not provide the results that we want. Malta’s pilot project for voluntary relocation is a case in point,” she added.
Malta’s pilot project, based on a voluntary relocation system, saw the participation of very few states, with low numbers of relocation.
Dr Dalli called for the EU to stop dragging its feet and review the Dublin Regulation that placed the responsibility of migrants on border states as soon as possible.
'Europe's Prime Ministers must show courage and leadership'
MEP Roberta Metsola urged EU Prime Ministers to face down the populists and to "have the courage to give people fleeing unimaginable horror the chance at a future without fear".
Addressing the European Parliament plenary during a debate on migration and the refugee crisis in Europe, Dr Metsola called on Europe to be an example for the world by sending an unequivocal message that it also stands with the voiceless.
Dr Metsola stated: "Member states seem to easily agree on how many fish we can pick up from our seas, they agree on how many plastic bags we can throw away, but when bodies of children are washing up on our shores, and we still cannot agree on how to deal with refugees humanely, then everything else we do seems to me to be of little use. Nothing is more urgent or more important. We like to say that we are a Union of shared values, but we are not yet a Union of shared responsibility and that is our collective failure."
Refugees are people running away from war, from death, said Dr Metsola.
She stressed that Prime Ministers simply cannot afford to look away; every single State must fulfil its moral and legal obligation to address the situation. "Walls and fences do not work and neither does simply throwing money at the issue."
Dr Metsola argued that Europe needed more than 'band-aid' solutions that served to make people feel better before the next emergency exposed its inadequacy.
"We need a binding, permanent, distribution mechanism for people in need of protection and we needed this yesterday. This is the challenge of our generation and we cannot be remembered as the ones who dithered while thousands suffered on our doorstep, or we will be the generation who failed," she said.
MEP David Casa said that it was high time the EU realised that the Dublin Regulation is was completely ineffective and must be revised.
He also welcomed the introduction of the concept of mandatory distribution mechanism.
“President Jean-Claude Juncker’s proposals today and particularly the admission that the way must involve mandatory burden sharing is a crucial step in the right direction.
It is the result of the culmination of many years of PN MEPs' hard work," he said.
MEP Alfred Sant said weaknesses within the European Union resulted from developments within the Union, not from unforeseen events happening outside or inside Europe. The weaknesses being demonstrated by the EU, he said, had to be correctly recognised.
Dr Sant said the EU was suffering from overstretch and over-reach. These led to the dilemmas and paralysis that affected the Union as it faced big problems, including the migration crisis, the stand-off in the Ukraine, the tragic Greek muddle and the persisting high unemployment.