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bogarde73
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They have to get their hands dirty if they want to preserve their precious socialist dream . . .but they won't:
New York Times:
AMSTERDAM — European Union interior ministers clashed on Monday over how to check the flow of migrants across their countries’ borders amid growing concern that the Continent’s commitment to the free movement of people within the bloc is at risk of collapse.
Some of the wealthy northern nations that are the preferred destinations of many migrants suggested that much of the solution should rest with their neighbors to the south, especially Greece, the main entry point into the European Union for refugees arriving from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan via Turkey. At a meeting here, Germany told Greece to do its “homework” to stop the flow at its borders, and Austria suggested that Greece could be excluded from the Schengen area, which allows border-free travel across much of the European Union.
Ioannis Mouzalas, a Greek minister for immigration policy, criticized the focus on his country, saying that the bloc had not made good on its pledges of more assistance in managing the flow of people — nearly 1.1 million arrived last year in the European Union — and that some European politicians were spreading “lies” about the crisis and the role of the government in Athens.
There is a “blame game against Greece,” Mr. Mouzalas said.
The larger question hanging over the ministers’ two-day meeting in Amsterdam is whether the European Union can agree on a collective approach to limiting the influx of migrants at Europe’s external borders — or whether that approach becomes an every-country-for-itself scramble to harden individual borders in response to domestic political, social and economic pressures.
Thousands of migrants are still arriving daily, and with no sign of a peaceful resolution in countries like Syria and Iraq, many more are expected this year as spring approaches and travel conditions from Turkey improve.
In the absence of any agreement on how to ease the flow of people into Greece and Italy, the crisis has become a political time bomb.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany is under increased pressure from conservatives to reverse her government’s policy of welcoming migrants. In Brussels, there are even concerns that the failure to agree on a solution could threaten the entire European Union project, which began after World War II with the goal of unifying the Continent and ensuring its peaceable future.
The European Union has been trying to persuade Turkey to take a more active role in resolving the crisis by doing more to look after refugees there and stop them from trying the journey to the European Union. Another idea that has gained growing attention is to choke off some of the northward flow of migrants at the border between Greece and Macedonia, potentially leaving huge numbers of migrants in Greece at a time when that country is still recovering from its depressionlike downturn.
“There are now signs the European debate could very quickly transition to ways of keeping the refugees in Greece regardless of the economic impact that would have, including a renewed risk of pressure on Greece to exit the eurozone,” said Mujtaba Rahman, the Europe director for the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy.
Reaching a long-discussed deal between the European Union and Turkey to ease the flow of migrants would substantially lessen those dangers, Mr. Rahman said.
On Monday, over lunch at the Dutch National Maritime Museum, the ministers discussed freezing the free movement of people inside parts of the bloc for up to a further two years.
So far, six countries, including Germany and Austria, have suspended the system for a legally permissible period of six months. For Germany and Austria, that six-month period expires in late spring, just as a surge of new arrivals from the Middle East and Africa is expected.
Such suspensions can be renewed four more times. But keeping national border controls in place would be a sign of how difficult it will be for the bloc to back an arrangement to share the burden.
Klaas Dijkhoff, the Dutch state secretary for security and justice, said at a news conference that extending the border controls would be “inevitable” given current conditions, but he underlined that such a step “couldn’t replace the search for a real solution.”
The European Commission would first need to recommend such an extension, and a majority of European Union governments would then need to give their approval before it was granted.
The ministers, meeting informally in the Netherlands, which is leading the bloc’s ministerial meetings for the next six months, also agreed to continue hashing out plans to create a European Border and Coast Guard Agency.
That plan would double the staff of the current border agency, Frontex, and would create a separate reserve force to be deployed even when a member state rejects help. But some politicians suspect a blunt power grab by Brussels intended to diminish national sovereignty.
Arriving at the meeting in Amsterdam, the Austrian interior minister, Johanna Mikl-Leitner, warned that “the external Schengen border will move back towards Central Europe” — a thinly veiled threat to exclude Greece from the passport-free area unless Athens acted more forcefully.
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