Several countries, notably Germany and Austria, have reintroduced border checks with their neighbors in recent months in response to Europe’s largest influx of migrants and refugees in decades. “And of course the activities to support Frontex (EU border agency) to increase its person (staff), this is most important too”.
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By the end of 2015, the European bloc will consider the deployment of the European Migration Liaison Officers (EMLOs) to Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Pakistan, Serbia, Ethiopia, Tunisia, Sudan, Turkey and Jordan, according to the Council’s statement.
Britain said Wednesday it is hoping for a vote in the coming days on a United Nations resolution that would authorize the European Union and individual countries to board and seize vessels on the high seas off Libya being used to smuggle migrants or for human trafficking to Europe.
It underscores that the resolution’s intention is to disrupt “organized criminal enterprises engaged in migrant smuggling and human trafficking and prevent loss of life” – not to prevent individuals from exercising their human rights or prevent them from seeking protection.
May also suggested that other countries in the European Union take more refugees directly from camps outside Europe.
“We need to see Europe upping its game,” said Britain’s interior minister, Theresa May.
She told the European Parliament that while offering a safe haven to those fleeing war and persecution was a duty, the EU must also tighten its arrangements with poorer nations “so that those who have no prospect of staying (as refugees) are actually taken back to their home countries”.
In the long term, France proposes a multinational European border guard corps which would have much more autonomy to act along the EU’s external frontiers when crises appear.
Kiska said Slovakia is in a position to take in thousands of refugees fleeing war and that it would not harm his country. “It’s why we need to crack down on those who are abusing our asylum systems”, she said.
It is also raising fears that if Europe can not protect its external borders then its cherished passport-free Schengen zone may crumble, as member states restore controls at the old internal borders to stop migrants. The migrants arrived here from the Croatian border to continue their journey to Austria.
The EU Commissioner for Migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, said “the first relocation plane of Eritreans is taking off tomorrow from Italy to Sweden – this means that they have been registered, fingerprinted, identified and screened for relocation”.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has faced calls within her center-right bloc for a limit on the number of refugees allowed into the country.
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Only a fraction of the almost 200,000 people who crossed into this country last month stayed, with most traveling on to Germany.
