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IMMIGRATION

Greece given ultimatum over refugees

EU member states on Friday gave Greece a three-month ultimatum to remedy "deficiencies" in controlling the influx of migrants or effectively face suspension from the Schengen passport-free zone.

Published: 13 February 2016 22:42 CET

Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastien Kurz. Photo: Ministry for Integration, Europe and Foreign Affairs

The decision — taken by ministers over Greek objections — is the culmination of weeks of pressure on Greece, the main gateway for the million refugees and migrants who entered Europe last year, stoking the continent's biggest such crisis since World War II.

Austria's foreign minister Sebastian Kurz then warned Macedonia that it should be ready to close its border to migrants, saying that Vienna may also begin turning refugees away in coming months as it struggles to cope with the surge from Greece through the Balkans.

A report adopted 10 days earlier by the European Commission, the EU executive, found Greece was failing to properly register and fingerprint migrants during inspections at the Turkish land border and several islands in the Aegean Sea last November.

“It is of utmost importance that Greece addresses the issues identified in the report adopted by the Commission as a matter of priority and urgency,” EU ministers said in a document containing 50 recommendations published on the European Council website.

The document gave Greece, which is already struggling to emerge from a massive debt crisis, one month to “establish an action plan to remedy the deficiencies.”

After a further two months, Greece must report back on how the scheme is being implemented.

If Greece fails to remedy the problems by mid-May, Brussels could authorise other member states to exceptionally extend border controls within the EU's cherished Schengen area, including with Greece, for up to two years, instead of the normal six months.

Such a scenario is outlined under article 26 of the Schengen border code.

Germany, which along with other member states introduced such border controls late last year, on Thursday extended the measures until May, the limit under current Schengen provisions.

The Schengen area allows passport-free travel through 26 countries, most of them in the EU, and is put forward as one of the major European achievements on unity.

Greece's 'substantial' costs

An EU source told AFP that Greece voted against the ultimatum, while Cyprus and Bulgaria abstained.

In a document published on the European Council website, Greece rejected the report's contention that it was responsible for “serious deficiencies” in border control and denied it was “seriously neglecting its obligations.”

Greece also said it had taken a number of measures at “substantial national financial and social cost” and reminded Brussels that the massive influx on its borders would put any member state under “severe pressure.”

However, it said it would continue cooperating with the EU and its institutions in dealing with the crisis.

The council website said Greece had to take action on registration procedures, sea border surveillance, border checks, risk analyses, human resources and training as well as equipment and international cooperation.

Germany, which received 1.1 million asylum seekers last year, has been the main destination for most of the migrants entering Europe.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's liberal refugee policy came under fire again as French Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned it is not sustainable in the long run, even if it is “justified temporarily.”

But Merkel, without naming the EU members involved, told reporters in Berlin there was “a group of countries” which may voluntarily accept more refugees in exchange for redoubled efforts from Turkey to tackle illegal immigration into, and out of, its territory.

She said this group, which will meet on the margins of an EU summit in Brussels on February 18-19, could also help Turkey financially.

Brussels and Ankara remain at odds despite their November aid-for-cooperation deal to curb the tide of migrants making their way from Turkey, which hosts 2.7 million mostly Syrian refugees.

A senior Turkish official said Friday that some 100,000 Syrian refugees are being looked after in camps inside Syria close to the Turkish border as they flee the latest upsurge in fighting.

As Ankara came under EU and UN pressure to open its border, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday threatened to send the millions of refugees in Turkey to EU member states.

In an interview with AFP in Damascus, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad urged Europe to stop “giving cover to terrorists in the beginning and through sanctions imposed on Syria” and help Syrians return home.

With the German far right coming out on top in two state elections earlier this month, the socialist-led national Berlin government has reimposed border controls on Western frontiers that are supposed to see freedom of movement in the European Union’s Schengen zone.

The Netherlands government, which includes the party of Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, announced on Wednesday that it had requested from Brussels an opt-out from EU rules on asylum, with Prime Minister Dick Schoof declaring that there was an asylum “crisis”.

Meanwhile, new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the left-wing Labour Party paid a visit to Rome for talks with Italian counterpart Georgia Meloni, whose party has neo-fascist roots, to discuss the strategies used by Italy in seeking to reduce migration.

Far-right parties performed strongly in June European elections, coming out on top in France, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to call snap elections which resulted in right-winger Michel Barnier, who has previously called for a moratorium on migration, being named prime minister.

We are witnessing the “continuation of a rightward shift in migration policies in the European Union,” said Jerome Vignon, migration advisor at the Jacques Delors Institute think-tank.

It reflected the rise of far-right parties in the European elections in June, and more recently in the two regional elections in Germany, he said, referring to a “quite clearly protectionist and conservative trend”.

Strong message

“Anti-immigration positions that were previously the preserve of the extreme right are now contaminating centre-right parties, even centre-left parties like the Social Democrats” in Germany, added Florian Trauner, a migration specialist at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Dutch-speaking university in Brussels.

While the Labour government in London has ditched its right-wing Conservative predecessor administration’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, there is clearly interest in a deal Italy has struck with Albania to detain and process migrants there.

Within the European Union, Cyprus has suspended the processing of asylum applications from Syrian applicants, while laws have appeared authorising pushbacks at the border in Finland and Lithuania.

Under the pretext of dealing with “emergency” or “crisis” situations, the list of exemptions and deviations from the common rules defined by the European Union continues to grow.

All this flies in the face of the new EU migration pact, agreed only in May and coming into force in 2026.

In the wake of deadly attacks in Mannheim and most recently Solingen blamed on radical Islamists, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government also expelled 28 Afghans back to their home country for the first time since the Taliban takeover of Kabul.

Such gestures from Germany are all the more symbolic given how the country since World War II has tried to turn itself into a model of integration, taking in a million refugees, mainly Syrians in 2015-2016 and then more than a million Ukrainian exiles since the Russian invasion.

Germany is sending a “strong message” to its own public as well as to its European partners, said Trauner.

The migratory pressure “remains significant” with more than 500,000 asylum applications registered in the European Union for the first six months of the year, he said.

‘Climate on impunity’

Germany, which received about a quarter of them alone, criticises the countries of southern Europe for allowing migrants to circulate without processing their asylum applications, but southern states denounce a lack of solidarity of the rest of Europe.

The moves by Germany were condemned by EU allies including Greece and Poland, but Scholz received the perhaps unwelcome accolade of praise from Hungarian right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Moscow’s closest friend in the European Union, when he declared “welcome to the club”.

The EU Commission’s failure to hold countries to account “only fosters a climate of impunity where unilateral migration policies and practices can proliferate,” said Adriana Tidona, Amnesty International’s Migration Researcher.

But behind the rhetoric, all European states are also aware of the crucial role played by migrants in keeping sectors going including transport and healthcare, as well as the importance of attracting skilled labour.

“Behind the symbolic speeches, European leaders, particularly German ones, remain pragmatic: border controls are targeted,” said Sophie Meiners, a migration researcher with the German Council on Foreign Relations.

Even Meloni’s government has allowed the entry into Italy of 452,000 foreign workers for the period 2023-2025.

“In parallel to this kind of new restrictive measures, they know they need to address skilled labour needs,” she said.