The United Nations called for a global response to the migrant crisis, warning that the number of refugees and migrants trapped in Greece due to border closures could reach 70,000 in the coming weeks.
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Austria angered Greece by not inviting it to a meeting of Balkan leaders in Vienna last week to coordinate a slew of border restrictions.
“This puts us in another phase” said Deputy Minister of Migration Ioannis Mouzalas in a TV broadcast on Thursday. And so, it is here that the situation is much more complex and complicated, with a continuous flow of migrants and refugees arriving via Turkey every day, and with many thousands stranded in Greece. “But unfortunately, the breaches of ceasefire, especially by Russian forces and Syrian regime renders the ceasefire even more vulnerable”, Davutoglu said at a joint news conference with Tusk in Ankara.
Relieving the suffering of refugees closer to their homes is a key part of an European Union strategy to deter people from making unsafe journeys to Europe, they say.
A new Schengen evaluation will be carried out by European Union experts, who will inspect Greece’s land and sea borders, from April 11-17. “We have a duty to shelter them and stop them from being on the streets”, he said.
Aid agencies estimate that about 1,000 migrants arrived at the border on Friday while the UNHCR says only 187 people were allowed to cross into Macedonia.
The commission also announced Wednesday that Greece is in the process of sending back 308 migrants, deemed not to be in line for worldwide protection, to Turkey where they came from.
Most refugees in Greece want to seek asylum in other European nations, such as Germany or Sweden, and need to cross through Macedonia to do so.
Tusk noted: “the first priority is to rapidly stem the flows and reduce illegal migration while preserving the integrity of the Schengen area (…) I want to state here very clearly: there is no alternative to respecting Schengen Code”. And this is why I welcome the Commission’s announcement yesterday of a new Emergency Assistance Instruments of 700 million euro for EU Member States, and in particular Greece, that are facing an extraordinary humanitarian crisis.
The European Union launched a plan Wednesday to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on humanitarian aid for migrants in member states that host large numbers of them.
“The number of refugees continues to rise, so do their humanitarian needs”, Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Christos Stylianides said.
More than a million people reached Europe previous year and some 133,000 arrived on the continent so far in 2016 in what has grown to be a major crisis for the bloc, that now also risks turning into a humanitarian disaster. Of these, more than 55,000 are Syrians fleeing the five-year-long civil war in their country; more than 31,000 Afghan, more than 20,000 are Iraqis.
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With Tusk wrapping up a whirlwind diplomatic tour before a crucial EU-Turkey summit in Brussels on Monday, the EU unveiled a plan for saving the passport-free Schengen zone that has been jeopardised by the huge influx of refugees.
