Refugees waiting at Macedonian border.
Advertisement
“For the first time since the beginning of the migration crisis, I can see a European consensus emerging”, he said in his summit invitation letter to fellow EU leaders.
Under worldwide law, people fleeing conflicts have the right to apply for asylum. To many in Europe, the most promising method seems to be a fast and large scale mechanism to ship back irregular migrants arriving in Greece.
Greece has been plunged at the heart of Europe’s greatest migration crisis in six decades after a series of border restrictions along the migrant trail, from Austria to Macedonia has caused a bottleneck on its soil.
Referring to the Greece-Turkey High-level Cooperation Council taking place in Izmir on Tuesday, the prime minister said Greece΄s aim was an active intervention and noted that Greece plays a key role in Turkey΄s relations with Europe, while European leaders consider that Greece has an important role in EU-Turkish relations.
Finger-pointing continued within the 28-nation European Union bloc on Saturday.
“These are extraordinary times”, said Stylianides, European commissioner for humanitarian aid and crisis management.
Germany’s neighbour, Austria, meanwhile, reiterated its call for Berlin to establish an annual quota of refugees.
“Germany, for its part, has to determine a figure for the number of refugees which can be accepted, which it is willing to go and pick up in the Syria and Turkey region”, Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann said in an interview in the daily Kurier.
Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov slammed the European Union over the crisis, calling for it to do more to help his country and adding “Macedonia is defending Europe from Europe itself”.
After weeks of diplomatic pressure from Berlin and Brussels, Ahmet Davutoglu, privately signalled in negotiations on Thursday that Ankara will accept the systematic returns of non-Syrians and step up action against smugglers.
The EU Commission also plans to present initial plans to reform the Dublin regulation that states that asylum requests be handled where asylum is first claimed in mid-March.
Around 8,000 people have been stranded – many for more than a week – on the Greece-Macedonia border, in increasingly squalid conditions, with shortages of food, water, shelter and sanitation.
“We can no longer shoulder this strain by ourselves”.
Greece sent in the army in February to speed up the creation of open camps for migrants and refugees but has occasionally run into opposition from local authorities.
The statuettes were found last November in a transit migrant camp that has hosted hundreds of thousands of Syrian and Iraqi refugees.
Hussam, a 25-year-old Syrian, says the refugees are hoping that Monday’s EU-Turkey summit will provide a breakthrough. On no account will the permanent hospitality positions exceed one fiftieth of total flows, Tsipras said, noting that this was the share that fell to Greece based on its population and economic capability. “If I survived Daesh, I’ll survive this as well”, he said using one of the acronyms for the Islamic State.
More than 700,000 refugees passed across Serbian territory past year, according to official information of the Serbian government.
In many cases, the documents do not carry full dates of birth, only the year, while disputes over the correct colour of a police stamp can also hold up the process for hours.
With the weather turning warmer and the sea crossing from Turkey to Greece becoming more navigable, the number of migrants making the trip is expected to rise.
Advertisement
Earlier this week, the European Commission adopted plans to distribute €700m (£543m; $760m) of emergency humanitarian funding between 2016-18 to help tackle the crisis.
