The talks are being held just over a week after the European Commission ruled that technology giant Apple didn’t pay the correct volume of tax in the European Union for more than a decade, a mounting bill that analysts say could constitute 19 billion euros ($21 billion) with interest.
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Johannes Hahn said after talks with Turkey’s foreign and European Union affairs ministers Friday the 3 billion euros the European Union has pledged to help refugees inside Turkey until the end of next year is starting to flow.
“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.
Immigration is high on the agenda.
Ahead of the talks, a government spokesman on immigration said Athens rejects reactivation of the so-called Dublin Regulation, which would allow other European Union members to send asylum-seekers back to Greece.
The Dublin Regulation that governs Europe’s Schengen passport-free area stipulates that people wishing to apply for asylum must do so in the first member country they arrive in. In most cases that was Greece, whose eastern islands were overwhelmed previous year by migrants packed into smugglers’ boats from Turkey.
Southern EU leaders on Friday called for revised asylum rules to fight the ongoing migration crisis, and appealed for unity ahead of a showdown on the post-Brexit future of the bloc.
Yet another German politician also spoke up about the “Club Med” meeting, saying he was anxious the southern countries could form a “coalition of redistributors” that would put the EU’s financial stability at risk.
Senior German lawmakers already warned against a stronger role for what they call the “Club Med” in the EU.
“That will create an ever greater strain on (Greece’s) asylum system and reception capacity”. Instead, only 3,000 have made the journey.
Weber chairs the European Peoples Party Group in the European parliament.
More than a million refugees and migrants traveled across Greece since the start of past year and authorities are struggling to cope with 60,000 people stranded here by European border closures.
More than 5,000 officers will be on duty in the city Saturday as demonstrations are planned to coincide with an annual speech on the state of the country’s economy by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.
“Economic stagnation, social cohesion problems, the rise of Euroscepticism and isolationism, the strengthening of far-right populist phenomena, are issues that we can not bypass”.
Tsipras aims to gain support for an anti-austerity push, a direct challenge to Berlin’s demand for increased belt-tightening, ahead of a mid-September EU summit in Bratislava for the 27 states that will remain after Britain leaves.
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Missing at the talks was Spain’s acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy who stayed at home amid desperate efforts in Madrid to form a coalition government.
