“All these measures have the principle of solidarity and fair sharing of responsibility at their core – a principle that binds each member state.”
(Frans Timmermans)
Invasion of Europe news….
If you are a regular reader of RRW, you know that Italy and Greece have taken the brunt of the invasion of Europe as those two countries are the most easily reached from Africa and the Middle East. You also know that a complete and shameful lack of will several years ago by the European Union to turn boats back to the African (or Turkish) coast resulted in a wave of hundreds of thousands of migrants attempting to get to Europe.
Of course Italy and Greece can’t manage the numbers, so a ‘sharing’ scheme was designed in 2015 where European Commission member states were apportioned a certain number of the mostly economic migrants to welcome to their countries.
Below is a screenshot showing how many each country was expected to take and how many each had agreed to.
Here is the latest news! Surprise! Quotas are not being met! Only Malta and Finland are on target we are told.
If you think none of this involves us—Americans! Think again!
Most maddening to me is that Malta is getting praised for being on target when we, the US, take about 500 fake refugees off their hands each year!
See my recent post on this outrageous relocation of mostly African boat people to your towns that began in the Bush Administration.
From The Guardian:
European countries have accepted less than 10% of the 160,000 refugees they promised to move to safety from unsanitary and cramped camps in Italy and Greece, leading the European commission to warn it will “accept no more excuses”.
Only 13,546 relocations have been carried out so far – 3,936 from Italy and 9,610 from Greece – amounting to just 8% of the total the EU committed to relocate in 2015.
Just two member states, Malta and Finland, have met their resettling obligations under the relocation scheme that will close in September.
[….]
Despite February setting a monthly record with about 1,940 relocations, the pace of relocation is still well below the targets of at least 3,000 a month from Greece and at least 1,500 from Italy.
Hungary, Austria and Poland refuse to participate in the relocation scheme. The Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Croatia and Slovakia are doing so on a “very limited basis”. The UK, which can opt out on parts of European asylum policy, has chosen not to participate.
During a press conference in Brussels, the commissioner for migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, warned that infringement proceedings against member states, including huge daily fines, could soon be levied.
Continue reading here.
As I understand it, these numbers represent migrants who have not already been approved through a normally long asylum process. If I am right about that, then The Guardian’s chart calling them “refugees” is inaccurate. They should be referred to as ‘migrants.’
This is a screenshot of the 2015 allocation goals (from The Guardian): what the European Commission expects and what countries actually agreed to. The numbers may have changed since 2015, but you get the idea….
Our complete ‘Invasion of Europe’ archive is here (it extends back many years). My Malta archive goes back to 2007 or 2008, see here.
President Trump supposedly stopped the flow from Malta to America in his first immigration order. It isn’t clear to me whether that survived the court challenge. We will know more in a few days.
