Refugee crisis: Juncker calls for radical overhaul of EU immigration policies

The EU executive has announced a drive aimed at radically overhauling Europe’s dysfunctional and fragmented immigration policies.

Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European commission, urged a common regime of EU border guards, the opening of legal channels to coordinate arrivals to Europe, as well as binding and permanent systems for absorbing the influx of refugees fairly across the continent.

In a major address to the European parliament in Strasbourg, Juncker called for root-and-branch reform of disparate immigration policies in the EU. He complained that national governments were failing to observe agreements on asylum procedures, and warned that several countries could be sanctioned.

“I don’t want to get despondent, but Europe is not in good shape,” Juncker said, concentrating his first and lengthy ‘state of the union’ speech on the EU’s biggest postwar migration emergency.
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Accusing national governments reluctant to take in refugees of historical amnesia, he listed Europe’s long record of helping refugees fleeing and persecution, from the Huguenots in 17th-century France to the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, to emphasise that the Geneva conventions established in 1951 to regulate refugee treatment were aimed at helping Europeans crushed in the fallout of the second world war.

“Today it is Europe that is sought as a place of refuge and exile. It is Europe today that represents a beacon of hope, a haven of stability in the eyes of women and men in the Middle East and in Africa. That is something to be proud of and not something to fear.”

Juncker confirmed that Brussels was asking national governments to agree to distribute 160,000 refugees currently in Italy, Greece and Hungary. This had to be on a binding and not a voluntary basis. “It has to be done and it will be done,” he said.
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Additionally, he proposed a permanent new system of sharing refugees in case of crisis. He also called for the creation of a European force of border and coastguards to patrol and police the external frontiers of the passport-free Schengen travel zone embracing 26 countries.

Juncker announced that the commission was drafting policies on how to open up legal channels to allow people seeking to get to Europe by highly hazardous routes to do so much more safely. “We have the means to help those fleeing from war, terror and oppression,” he said. “Migration must change from a problem to be tackled to a well managed resource.”

The blueprint unveiled by Juncker sets the scene for a potentially ugly confrontation on Monday in Brussels, when interior ministers from the 28 countries meet to discuss the compulsory refugee quotas demanded by the EU and supported strongly by Germany, France and Italy but vehemently rejected by the younger EU members of central Europe. They remain intensely reluctant to bow to a system of imposed quotas.
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Juncker pointedly remarked that today’s wave of immigration from the Middle East and Africa could be tomorrow’s influx from a war-ravaged Ukraine, the message being that the eastern Europeans on the frontline would then demand help from western Europe.

The east Europeans responded robustly to Juncker’s demands. The Slovak prime minister, Robert Fico, dismissed the quotas as a non-starter. “We won’t bow down to Germany and France,” he said. “Quotas are irrational.”

The Czech Republic’s Europe minister, Tomas Prouza, described the quotas idea as “nonsensical.”

Beata Szydlo, on Poland’s nationalist right and tipped to become prime minister following elections next month, complained that Warsaw was under pressure from Brussels to accede to a new quotas system. “The Polish government should definitely not yield to this pressure,” she said.

In Berlin, Angela Merkel offered vocal support for Juncker, arguing that the commission proposals did not go far enough. “Generally we need a binding agreement on a binding distribution of refugees between all member states based on fair criteria,” the German chancellor told the Bundestag.

Juncker’s figure of 160,000 was only a first step, she added. Receiving refugees was a European responsibility, but there was no point in putting a ceiling on the numbers to be shared.

Germany and others receiving the lion’s share of refugees are warning that national border controls within the Schengen area could be re-established if countries continue to veto equitable sharing of the new arrivals.

Juncker stressed that the Schengen zone would not be sacrificed while he remained in charge of the commission. Speaking of “common” and “united” refugee and asylum policies, he said they had to “be permanently anchored in our policy approach and our rules”.

“We will propose ambitious steps towards a European border and coastguard before the end of the year,” he said. “The commission will come forward with a well-designed legal migration package in early 2016.”

The proposed overhaul aimed at establishing a new uniform EU asylum and refugee regime, which will be extremely difficult to achieve given national sensitivities and the prominence of immigration issues in national politics across Europe, is unlikely to affect Britain.

The UK is not part of the Schengen zone and will be unaffected by a common European border guard system. It also enjoys special status allowing it to choose whether to take part in common asylum policies and has already declared it will have no part of any refugee-sharing quotas system.

However a cross-party group of 14 British MEPs have written a letter to David Cameron urging him to listen to the views of European experts on the issue of relocation and to take part in Juncker’s proposed scheme.

The Liberal Democrats’ only MEP, Catherine Bearder, said the UK’s European partners were exasperated by the UK prime minister’s “stubborn refusal to take part in a collective European response to this crisis”.

“By refusing to take a single refugee that has arrived on Europe’s shores, the UK government is shirking our international duty and lowering Britain’s standing in the world,” she said. “Of course we must do more to tackle the causes of the refugee crisis at source, but we cannot turn a blind eye to the human tragedy unfolding right now on our continent.”

Glenis Willmott MEP, Labour’s leader in the European parliament, said: “The prime minister should be leading efforts for a common EU plan for relocation and resettlement of refugees – not acting in isolation, weeks after Germany and other countries have taken the lead.”
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A spokeswoman for Cameron said Juncker’s speech covered “the importance of a fair deal for Britain”.

“The point I’d make is that the UK is already playing its part and – in terms of a financial contribution to tackling the refugee crisis from Syria – we are the leading donor nation on that,” she said.

“In terms of any relocation, we have already been clear on our position, which is that we are not bound by it and we are going to focus our efforts on resettlement.”

The biggest speech of Juncker’s 10 months as head of the commission came close on the heels of family bereavement. His mother died last Sunday, since when his father has been taken into hospital.

In a plea for European generosity towards the 500,000 he said had entered the EU this year, Juncker said: “Europe is the baker in Kos who gives away his bread to hungry and weary souls. Europe is the students in Munich and in Passau who bring clothes for the new arrivals at the train station. Europe is the policeman in Austria who welcomes exhausted refugees upon crossing the border. This is the Europe I want to live in.”