More refugees are trying to get into Europe now than at any other time since World War II. Most are fleeing war and tyranny in Syria, Afghanistan and Eritrea. On Monday, Germany’s Angela Merkel and French leader François Hollande announced a ten-point plan based on the resettlement of genuine asylum seekers by quota across the European Union. Merkel is determined to get other nations to accept more refugees, but she will “face stiff headwinds”, says The Times.
Bulgaria has erected 50 miles of razor wire along its frontier with Turkey, now home to around two million Syrian refugees. Hungary is “fortifying” its 100-mile border with Serbia. Slovakia has said it will only take Christians. Britain, which is not a member of Europe’s 30-year-old passport-free Schengen zone and is fencing off parts of Calais, has the “right to opt out of any joint plan” and has indicated that it will do so.
Mainland Europe’s Schengen zone, already under “political strain” as a result of migrants arriving in Italy and Greece and trying to move north, has been dealt another blow by the foiled terrorist attack on a French train last week, says Matthew Holehouse in The Daily Telegraph. Belgian prime minister Charles Michel has called for reinstating identity and luggage inspections, claiming they could be compatible with Schengen.
Security fences and dogs won’t deter those desperate enough to risk life to get to Europe, says Natalie Nougayrede in The Guardian. The refugee flow will be “a fact of life for years to come”. Europe has a moral obligation to help. Self-interest enters the equation too. Germany is well placed to take the lead – it was the first country to suspend the 1990 Dublin Regulation which says refugees must seek asylum in the first European country they set foot in, declaring all Syrian asylum seekers welcome.
Applications to stay in Germany will reach a record 800,000 this year. But alongside humanitarian motives, Merkel is being pragmatic. The country’s population is set to fall by 18 million by 2060. It needs migrants. So does the rest of the EU, whose working population is set to shrink by 13 million by 2030.
The ten-point plan beats the “chaotic and arbitrary status quo”, but it is still inadequate, says The Times. A system that guarantees resettlement “can only strengthen the ‘pull factor’”. There is “no shortage” of alternative strategies that shift the emphasis to curbing migration at source. The upheavals in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa present the EU with “an unprecedented challenge to its identity, its administrative muscle and its ability to combine compassion with hard-headed problem solving… The debate has hardly begun.”