Asked by The World Weekly about the likelihood of suspension, EU Commission spokeswoman Tove Ernst said: “The Commission is not in the habit of commenting on rumours”.
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Austria applauded Greece’s acceptance of European Union assistance. “There was high tension between them over the past days because the refugees are allowed to cross the border, while the economic migrants are not”, the Macedonian journalist explained.In his words, the tension is looming larger and there were clashes between the migrants yesterday.
Greece has asked for European Union help in managing its borders, as thousands of migrants remain stuck on its northern frontier with Macedonia, BBC News reports.
Greece has activated the EU Civil Protection Mechanism to benefit from material support to help cope with the influx of refugees and asylum seekers in the country, the European Commission (EC) said on December 3. Exhausted of waiting, thousands of refugees then broke through a Greek police cordon, surging to the Macedonian border, which immediately closed again.
Other ministers and the Commission welcomed Greece’s decision to accept more help from Frontex. Macedonia, which was the favored route from Greece northwards, has followed suit, building a fence on the border and preventing anyone not from Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq from crossing.
A girl waves to a group of photographers behind a auto window after her arrival on a vessel, with other refugees and migrants from the Turkish coast to the northeastern Greek island of Lesbos, on Thursday, Dec. 3, 2015.
More than 800,000 people have arrived in Europe from the Middle East and Africa so far this year, many of them making the treacherous journey across the Mediterannean Sea in flimsy dinghies. Earlier, Macedonian police fired tear gas at protesting migrants who pelted them with stones. More than 3000 people have drowned trying to reach Europe on packed, flimsy boats this year.
“We don’t have anything against the other people, but we have to cross too”, he told The Associated Press.
The European Commission confirmed Thursday that it received these three requests from Athens.
The agreement with Frontex will see the border agency provide personnel to help register refugees and migrants at Greece’s border with FYROM, where some 6,000 people have now amassed as a result of Skopje refusing to allow anyone except Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans, who can qualify as refugees, through. As Greece has no land border with the rest of the Schengen zone, that could mean obliging ferries and flights coming from Greece to undergo passport checks.
“The situation in Idomeni must stop”, he said.
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The agency says it now has 195 officers on the Aegean islands. “The chancellor and other members of the German government have repeatedly noted how noteworthy freedom of movement under Schengen is to us, and in that the possibility of preserving this, which we want, depends very directly on how we as Europeans are able to protect and effectively control our exterior borders”, Seibert stated.
