“Afghanistan is in the same situation as Syria…”
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“The gap between pledges and what is on the table must be reduced otherwise we are losing all kinds of credibility”, the Commission president said during a report to the European Parliament on measures the EU is taking to stem and control an inflow of hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees and others.
The reception places, to be provided with the help of the UN’s refugee agency, the UNHCR, will be vital to providing shelter, registering the migrants and helping better manage the flows, he said. These include 50.000 places in Greece, with the other half in the western Balkans.
Mr Juncker said: “Nine member states have let us know that they can soon relocate 700 people”.
Croatian police say that a 105-year-old Afghan woman is among the migrants who have arrived at the country’s main refugee camp near the border with Serbia. This means registering people when they enter the EU. “No registration, no rights”, he said.
“This is one of the greatest litmus tests Europe has ever faced”, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters after the summit.
“The countries that make no special effort, that can not prove they were severely affected, will not see the rules applied more flexibly”, he said. Many eastern members oppose a German-led push to redistribute the refugees across the bloc’s 28 states with mandatory quotas, saying the migrants don’t want to stay on their territory.
As the diplomatic wrangling continued, humanitarian workers such as French volunteer Jerome Pelloussat at the Croatia-Serbia border called for urgent help.
“We should go down south and defend the borders of Greece if they are not able to do that”, said Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, who claimed he was attending the meeting only as an “observer” because Hungary was no longer on the migrant route since it tightened borders.
As part of the deal, 400 police officers will be deployed to Slovenia, which is having difficulty with the mass influx of traveling migrants seeking asylum. “Croatia is now bound by these agreements”, Mr. Cerar said. “But you can’t predict, you simply don’t know enough about the movements of refugees”. Mr. Cerar has previously raised the possibility of building a fence along its border, similar to what Hungary has done, but he declined early Monday to specify the measures he was considering now.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has said Europe can not find a solution to the refugee crisis without Turkey’s help, criticizing European leaders for not even inviting Turkey to a meeting on refugees in Brussels.
BRUSSELS, October 22 (Xinhua) – Politicians face an urgent task to overcome both public distrust and tensions among governments that threaten the future of Europe, European Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans warned here Thursday at the opening of Friends of Europe’s annual State of Europe debate.
“At least we had the chance to speak to each other, to hear each other and to learn a bit about the problems”, Mr. Vucic said.
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Fears over the health of those trying to make their way overland and into the Eurozone have now prompted the European Union to offer refugees in Greece paid flights to countries offering asylum.
