“Greece seems to be a permanent issue for us”, Malta’s Finance Minister Edward Scicluna said in an interview after the meeting.
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It also stressed the need to revise existing cross-nation European Union asylum rules.
Tsipras, an anti-austerity champion who says the fiscal straitjacket favored by Germany will never allow weak economies such as Greece’s to recover, is also trying to swing more European Union states to his vision.
At that meeting, Hollande said, leaders wanted to put forward ideas on security and defense, growth, and the migration crisis, which should not exclude the right of people to asylum.
Renzi added: “We aspire to be an initiative of dialogue which seeks to unite Europe more, and not to divide it”.
“The fact that (French) President Hollande – probably for internal political reasons – and (Italian) Prime Minister Renzi are letting Mr. Tsipras manipulate them is not really a sign of responsibility”, Weber said.
Friday’s meeting was held against the backdrop of faltering growth in the bloc, a deepening migrant crisis and British plans to quit the EU.
“It is now common knowledge that Europe is at a critical crossroads”, Tsipras said.
A showdown is expected in Bratislava, with the Visegrad four already holding their own meeting in June to present a united front. Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy did not attend.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble was not optimistic over the impact of the gathering, which some have derisively termed “Club Med”.
The summit in Athens drew criticism from German lawmaker Manfred Weber who chairs the European Peoples Party Group in the European parliament.
In an allusion to the EU’s tight budgetary corset, Renzi stressed that “we are in a phase in which Europe can not keep being just rules, technicalities, finance and austerity”.
A day earlier, Tsipras had also hit out at Germany’s perceived domination of the EU.
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) – Turkey’s foreign minister has suggested that a landmark deal to stop migrants reaching the European Union can be salvaged despite disagreement on conditions for relaxing visa restrictions for Turkish citizens traveling to the bloc.
Budget disagreements notwithstanding, Berlin has proven very sympathetic to the southern countries on migration. In most cases that was Greece, whose eastern islands were overwhelmed a year ago by migrants packed into smugglers’ boats from Turkey.
They also confirmed that the Eurogroup had called for a rapid completion of remaining milestones by the end of September so that the remaining 2.8 billion euros in bailout loans might be disbursed, with Tsakalotos agreeing that it was in everyone’s interests for the prior actions to be completed soon.
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Greek authorities registered more than 3,300 unaccompanied asylum-seeking and other migrant children who arrived in Greece in the first seven months of this year, HRW said.
