EU interior
ministers have agreed to relocate 32,000 migrants across member states.
However, the fate of at least 8,000 asylum seekers' still hang in the balance
as the bloc struggles to find a common policy.
Deutsche Welle, 21 July 2015
EU interior
ministers have managed to agree on relocating more than 32,000 refugees located
in Greece and Italy to states across the 28-member bloc. But the fate of 8,000
migrants was still uncertain after talks in Brussels on Monday.
"We
have a solution for relocation this year. For next year we are not yet exactly
there, we will talk about this in October or November," said Emily Haber,
secretary of state in Germany's Interior Ministry, after the talks.
In June, EU
leaders struck a deal on distributing 40,000 migrants coming from Eritrea and
Syria among member states. At Monday's meeting, Germany committed to taking in
10,500 refugees. Non-EU countries Switzerland and Norway agreed to take in 519
and 3,500 people, respectively. Another 22,504 migrants living in camps outside
the EU were being relocated within the bloc.
However,
there were still around 8,000 migrants who could not be settled.
"Figures
are sometimes encouraging, sometimes disappointing, sometimes, even, perhaps,
embarrassing," Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, who headed
the meeting, told journalists.
Dublin
rules need changing
"The
fact that member states have failed to reach an agreement on the relocation of
just 40,000 refugees after five months is ludicrous," said Gianni
Pittella, who heads the Socialists & Democrats group in the European
Parliament. "The amount of time and political energy that is being wasted
on this issue is frankly farcical."
France and Germany agreed to take in around 21,000 asylum seekers earlier this year, but
countries like Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain and the Baltic
states have been reluctant to house immigrants.
Speaking in
a TV interview on Sunday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for a fairer
distribution of refugees. "The ongoing talks are not that bad,"
Merkel said. However the Dublin agreement for asylum seekers was not relevant
to current reality any longer, she added.
The Dublin agreement states that refugees need to apply for
asylum in their first point of entry in the European Union. Many EU member
states, especially those on migrant routes in the south, have been under
pressure following a refugee surge and are clamoring for help.
Nearly 1,900 refugees have died so far this year while
crossing the stretch over the Mediterranean from Africa to Europe. So far in
2015, more than 150,000 people have landed on Greece and Italy's shores seeking
refuge from conflicts and poverty in North Africa and the Middle East,
according to data from the International Organization for Migration.
mg/cmk (dpa, Reuters, AP)
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