EUの難民問題、解決の道みえず

EUの難民問題、解決の道みえず

昨年９月、年間１６万人を受け入れ、それを自動的に配分する

合意が取り付けられたのだが、ギリシア、イタリアから再配置

されたのはわずか２７２人であった。１９カ国は１人も受け入れなかったことが判明している。

　昨年１年間で１００万人以上がＥＵに流入しているが、その９０％は、ドイツ、スウェーデン、オーストリアに入っている。

　こうしたなか、三国は、ギリシアに激しい怒りをぶつけており、

ちゃんと取り締まれないのなら、シェンゲン協定から追放する、とオーストリアなどは述べている。

　しかし、ギリシアは、ギリシアで怒りが収まらない。「ＥＵが難民対策に２０兆ユーロ使った、と言っているが、ギリシアには来ていない」と。実際、ＥＵは自らの統治能力の欠如、混乱をギリシアに八つ当たりしている。ギリシアは、二本の足で歩けないような状況になっている（させられている）国である。そこに記録的な数の難民が押し寄せている。

　メルケルは、トルコに難民がＥＵに向かうのを阻止することへの

協力を懇請しているが、その見返りに支払う資金のメドは

立っていない。

　議論され、合意に達しても、実行はされていない、できていない、という状況が明確になってしまっている。メルケルやブリュッセルが号令を発しても、皆、各自、独自の状況のもと、バラバラに行動しているばかりか、当のドイツやスウェーデンですら、結局、国境警備の強化の実施、もしくはその方向で考えている始末である。

　ＥＵとしてのガヴァナビリティが完全に崩壊状況に陥っている。

合意に達したことを守らないメンバーがいたときに、それに制裁が加えられないとなると、その組織は成り立たない。

　国境警備がなってないから、ＥＵから警備隊を送り、警備を強化する、という案が出されているが、当該国は首を縦には振らない。それは主権侵害と見なされているからである。

　ユーロ危機は大きな危機ではあったが（そしていまもギリシアを中心にくすぶっているが）、メンバー内部での問題であったし、金融・経済的問題であった。が、いまは外部からの難民流入問題であり、かつ生ける人間の問題であり、しかもその規模が大きすぎる。今年もほぼ同じ規模の難民が流入し続けるとみられており、そしてギリシアとの国境を閉鎖してしまうようなことをすれば、ギリシアはパンクする。難民が大量にギリシアに滞在し、彼らであふれ返り、ギリシアにはそれを処理する能力は何もないから、大変な事態に発展することは目に見えている。・・・

以下は関連する３編の記事。言えるのは、メディアが騒いでいるだけではなく、当事者がＥＵ崩壊の危機、と公言しながら動いているという事実があり、ことそれほど深刻な事態である。そして

何ら解決策がみつかっていないのである。

＊＊＊

Refugees: EU relocates just 0.17% of pledged target in four months

Officials say just 272 Syrians and Eritreans have been transferred from Greece and Italy to other countries in the continent

Donate to the Guardian’s charity appeal for refugees

 Children and adults in thermal blankets after arriving on Lesbos. Figures show 19 EU countries have not relieved Greece and Italy of any refugees. Photograph: Santi Palacios/AP

Patrick Kingsley Migration correspondent

Tuesday 5 January 2016 17.55 GMTLast modified on Wednesday 6 January 201614.47 GMT

·          

European countries have relocated　just 0.17% of the asylum seekers they promised to welcome four months ago, it has emerged, in a revelation that campaigners say is the latest failure of Europe’s confused response to the continent’s refugee crisis.

EU officials announced this week that just 272 Syrians and Eritreans have been formally transferred (pdf) from the countries on the frontline of the migration crisis, Greece and Italy, to countries elsewhere in the continent. It constitutes 0.17% of the 160,000 refugees that EU members pledged to share at a summit in September, and 0.03% of the 1,008,616 asylum seekers who arrived by sea in 2015.

Europe’s slow response stands in sharp contrast to the accelerating nature of the crisis, with the daily arrival rate to Greece now 11 times higher than it was in January 2015. On Tuesday, at least 34 people died in the Aegean sea between Greece and Turkey in the first such shipwrecks of 2016.

Many of those who do reach Greece are nominally supposed to be shared between other countries in the EU, under the terms of the September agreement. But according to figures released this week, 19 EU countries have not relieved Greece and Italy of any asylum seekers, while those that have are largely the countries that are already bearing a significant share of the continent’s refugee burden, such as Sweden and Germany.

European countries have also failed to provide the full quota of border guards they pledged to send to Greece and Italy in September – with just 447 guards provided out of a promised 775. Hungary, one of the loudest proponents of a more heavily fortified European border, has seconded just four guards to border duty in Greece and Italy.

EU governments push through divisive deal to share 120,000 refugees

Read more

Campaigners say the slow response to the crisis is compounding the problem. The EU’s September agreement was meant to give a semblance of order to the distribution of migrants across the continent. But Steve Symonds, Amnesty International UK’s refugee and migrant rights programme director, said that Europe’s failure to uphold the agreement is adding to the chaos, since it gives asylum seekers no incentive to stay put in Greece and wait to be redistributed.

“Many of the people that this is supposed to affect are not making the [asylum] claims in Greece and Italy because they don’t trust the system and are therefore prepared to move on in their own way,” Symonds said.

He added: “It really shows a failure of all states to properly commit themselves to this from the start. It has never got off the ground and the UK’s decision even before the relocation [to opt out of the process completely] has not encouraged other states to participate. Although they’ve formally signed up, they’ve done so without any commitment.”

Greece and Italy’s foreign ministries did not make any spokespeople available for comment.

＊＊＊

Where there's a wall, there's no way: refugee crisis needs a better idea

Hungary’s Viktor Orbán wants to fence Greece off from Europe, but analysts say this will not reduce the flow of people

 Refugees arrive at Tabanovce, northern Macedonia. There have been calls for a fence along the entire border with Greece. Photograph: Boris Grdanoski/AP

Patrick Kingsley Migration correspondent

Monday 25 January 2016 18.43 GMTLast modified on Monday 25 January 201618.53 GMT

·          

In metaphorical terms, the migration crisis has driven Greece to the wall, with more than 850,000 asylum seekers landing on its shores in 2015. This year, the expression may take on a more literal meaning, depending on whether you believe the bluster of rightwing European leaders.

In recent days, Hungary’s hardline prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has called for Greece to be walled off from the rest of Europe – or at least from Macedonia, the next step along the migration trail towards Germany. Orbán wants the EU to expand an existing fence around the Greek border town of Idomeni along the entire length of the Greece-Macedonia border, just as Hungary walled off its own border in September.

The proposal is understood to have been among a raft of ideas discussed at the latest top-level migration meeting between European politicians on Monday.

EU migration crisis: Greece threatened with Schengen area expulsion

Read more

Some Brussels insiders view the suggestion as unworkable. “I don’t think it’s conceivable,” said Gerald Knaus, a former diplomat and the chairman of the European Stability Initiative, an influential European thinktank.

Which is just as well, since migration experts doubt that more walls will stop the flow of refugees to Europe. For a start, it will take time to change the group-think of asylum seekers still intent on using the Greek islands to reach Europe. And even if numbers are reduced by as much as 80%, the level would still be higher than the then record highs of 2014.

There is a chance that desperate people would simply find other ways into Europe, said John Dalhuisen, the Europe director for Amnesty International. “An extension of the fence along the Greek border won’t reduce a net flow into Europe in the long run,” he said.

“Other routes will be found. Every single time Europe has erected a fence or strengthened its maritime border, people have taken other routes, despite the increased expense and danger.” His comments refer to past attempts to seal Europe’s borders with Morocco, Libya and countries on the west coast of Africa.

In Greece, alternative routes are close at hand. Refugees will likely find new ways through Albania to Macedonia’s west and Bulgaria and Romania to the east. Some have already started using these alternatives. Since November, migrants from countries other than Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan have been turned back from the Macedonian border, and blocked from accessing a humanitarian corridor to Germany that has been in place since August.

Undeterred, many have simply turned to smugglers to find them alternative ways through the Balkans. An expanded Macedonian fence will likely speed up this process, returning matters to how they were prior to last summer, when thousands were smuggled towards Germany despite the absence of the humanitarian corridor.

Knaus said: “In the end, people will still get through. Anyone already in Greece will not turn back to Turkey.”

Deadliest January for refugees as 45 die when boats capsize in Aegean

Read more

Behind the scenes, Knaus is pushing for an entirely different solution – the mass resettlement of refugees directly from Turkey. It is impossible, he points out, to stop people reaching the Greek islands from Turkey. Once in Greece, it will also be hard to contain them – and even if it were possible, Greece does not have the resources to care for them.

The only way out is to persuade Turkey to take back asylum seekers who reach Greece by boat, and as a quid pro quo, for Germany to formally resettle hundreds of thousands of refugees directly from Turkey. This would not prevent refugees from reaching Europe. But it would allow the continent to manage their arrivals better, decide who comes and when, and know who they are before they arrive.

To continue the metaphor, trying to stop their passage entirely would be like banging one’s head against a wall.

“I’m convinced that a lot of people just don’t understand the basic issues,” Knaus said. “Whatever they say, you can’t close the Aegean [maritime] border.”

 ＊＊＊

Refugee crisis: Schengen scheme on the brink after Amsterdam talks

Passport-free area faces being suspended for two years, as senior diplomat says of refugee influx: ‘This cannot continue’

 A police officer stops a car at the French-Italian border on Sunday. The Schengen system enabled passport-free travel within the 26-country zone. Photograph: Eric Gaillard/Reuters

Ian Traynor in Brussels

Monday 25 January 2016 19.14 GMTLast modified on Tuesday 26 January 201600.55 GMT

·          

EU governments have placed a large question mark over the future of Europe’s passport-free travel zone, signalling an extension of national border controls within the 26-country Schengen area in response to the immigration crisis.

As Europe scrambled to put together a coherent answer to the biggest challenge the union has faced, EU interior ministers meeting in Amsterdam on Monday compounded a sense of gloom and confusion in the face of ever rising numbers of people heading into Greece from Turkey.

Klaas Dijkhoff, the Dutch migration minister, said the governments were to ask the European commission for permission to extend and prolong the border controls from May because the numbers of refugees reaching Europe were not diminishing.

Is the Schengen dream of Europe without borders becoming a thing of the past?

Read more

Under the rules governing the open travel area, governments could suspend the Schengen system for two years, dealing a potentially terminal blow to a scheme that has been in place for more than 20 years. “These measures are inevitable at this point in time,” said Dijkhoff of the likely suspension.

Following eight hours of talks in the Dutch capital, the Austrian interior minister, Johanna Mikl-Leitner, said: “Schengen is on the brink of collapse.”

In the past week, national leaders and senior EU officials have made increasingly alarmist pronouncements on Schengen’s future, warning that the travel zone could crumble within weeks and bring with it the risk of union dissolution.

The countries bearing the brunt of the mass influx of more than 1 million asylum seekers in the past year rounded on Athens, with Austria bluntly dismissing Greek arguments and warning that it could be kicked out, at least temporarily, of the Schengen area. Germany and Sweden echoed the criticism. Between them, the three countries have taken in about 90% of asylum seekers over the past year, but are reining in their liberal admissions policies.

Vienna last week triggered a chain reaction of curbs on refugee movement by announcing plans to cap the numbers allowed in over the next four years. Sweden has already imposed stringent national border controls and Germany is mulling whether to suspend Schengen for two years.

Mikl-Leitner rejected Greek arguments about the difficulties of patrolling its maritime borders with Turkey and explicitly warned Athens about a Schengen expulsion. “Greece has one of the biggest navies in Europe,” she said. “It’s a myth that the Greek-Turkish border cannot be protected.”

The Swedish home affairs minister, Anders Ygeman, said of Greece: “If a country doesn’t live up to its obligations, we will have to restrict its connections to the Schengen area.”

EU governments have been seized by a rising sense of panic, desperate for the numbers of arrivals to slow down while all the evidence points in the opposite direction. About 35,000 have made the sea crossing from Turkey to Greece since the beginning of the year, a 20-fold increase on the same period last year.

Analysis Where there's a wall, there's no way: refugee crisis needs a better idea

Hungary’s Viktor Orbán wants to fence Greece off from Europe, but analysts say this will not reduce the flow of people

Read more

“We don’t have any good options, only bad options on the table,” said a senior diplomat in Brussels. “This simply can’t continue. There’s agreement among the member states on that.”

Meanwhile, as the numbers arriving via Turkey have shown little let-up, three EU commissioners were in Ankara in what has turned into quasi-permanent negotiations with the Turkish government aimed at getting them to stem the flow.

The EU-Turkey pact shows little sign of delivering and the EU also cannot agree on how to fund the €3bn (£2.3bn) price tag promised to the Turks, although Germany wants to pay Turkey more. A joint statement from the German and Turkish governments following Berlin negotiations last Friday referred to the €3bn bill as merely a “first” payment.

Pressure on Greece also highlighted further divisions in an EU riven several ways over the refugee crisis. Italy, Luxembourg and the European commission all talked down the prospects of punishing Greece or expelling it from the Schengen system.

 Europe’s walls are going back up – it’s like 1989 in reverse

Timothy Garton Ash

Read more

“There is no plan to exclude Greece from anything,” said Natasha Bertaud, the commission spokeswoman on immigration. She confirmed, however, that an EU mission was in Macedonia last week exploring how to strengthen the vulnerable country’s border with northern Greece.

Following Austria’s announcement of immigration curbs, countries on the Balkan route between Greece and Austria have followed suit, meaning that hundreds of thousands could end being kettled up in Greece unless there is an EU policy breakthrough.

Although the EU’s border agency Frontex has no mandate to operate in Macedonia, member governments have sent a total of 57 police and immigration officers to the country.

Athens responded angrily to the pressure. The migration minister, Yiannis Mouzalas, said Greece was being scapegoated in an EU “blame game”. “The European crisis will be a humanitarian crisis in Greece with thousands of trapped refugees and migrants,” he warned. 

Greek officials pointed out that they have so far spent €2bn managing the migration wave. “That’s money we really don’t have,” said one. “Tell me: where’s the European solidarity?”

The Syriza-led government says that ringfencing the eurozone’s weakest link would be tantamount to turning it into a huge refugee camp at a time of acute social hardship.

Echoing those fears, analysts said suspension from the border-free zone could easily reignite scenarios of ejection from the single currency, which Athens only narrowly averted last summer. “It’s a symbolic act,” said economics professor Theodore Pelagidis, a fellow at the Brookings thinktank. “It would be interpreted by investors that Greece could face the danger of being ejected from the eurozone in the not so distant future.”

Regional experts said next month’s EU summit between heads of state would be critical. By then, officials deployed by Brussels will have completed a Schengen evaluation report expected to play a decisive role in determining whether Greece should remain in the zone. 

“The February meeting will give us a better sense of whether the EU-Turkey deal is delivering,” said Mujtaba Rahman, head of European analysis at Eurasia group, a risk consultancy. “The real power lies in Germany. For Merkel, it is really important to deliver a substantial reduction in refugee numbers by the time of local state elections in mid-March,” he said.

There was a widespread perception, he said, that Greece had not done enough to process migrants properly, including setting up camps or hot spots where refugees could reside before their relocation. “Germany and others have become very frustrated with the lack of progress,” he said. “Now they are at risk of having a solution imposed upon them.”