EU
unveils border force plan in new effort to stem migrant crisis
Duncan Robinson and
Peter Spiegel in Brussels
December 15, 2015
2:31 pm
The new agency,
called the European Border and Coast Guard, would have 1,000
permanent staff and be able to call on a pool of 1,500 additional
personnel, who could be sent to shore up porous borders in a crisis.
The agency would
ultimately have an annual budget of €322m, or more than double the
€143m allocated for Frontex, the EU’s current, largely powerless
border agency.
The plan must still
be approved by EU member states and the European Parliament but a
commission official said it already enjoyed the backing of France and
Germany, the two largest EU members. Both are also participants in
Europe’s passport-free Schengen travel zone. The UK and Ireland,
which do not participate in Schengen, would not be covered by the
plan.
Frans Timmermans,
the commission vice-president who has spearheaded Brussels’
response to the refugee crisis, defended the plan to give the agency
the ability to trump national objections, saying such powers were
unlikely to be invoked.
“I see this as a
safety net, as the ultimate measure that might be possible,
theoretically,” Mr Timmermans said. “My impression is most member
states who get in to difficulty would gladly accept help.”
The agency was
proposed as part of a new package of legislation that represents
Brussels’ latest effort to stem the influx of refugees from the
Middle East and north Africa.
That effort has
gained urgency as the sheer number of migrants deepened EU member
states’ fear of losing control of their borders. The recent Paris
attacks have also highlighted longstanding worries that Schengen
could be exploited by terrorists who, after breaching the zone’s
outer frontier, could then travel freely across Europe’s national
borders.
As part of the
package, the commission also proposed a voluntary scheme of
“humanitarian admission”, which would see tens of thousands of
migrants plucked from camps in Turkey and resettled across willing EU
member states.
Officials made clear
the admission programme would be cut if Ankara did not work to halt
the uncontrolled refugee flow.
The number of people
making the trip from Turkey to Greece dropped sharply last month,
probably because of the colder weather. Still, more than 108,000
people were detected entering the EU via this route — an all-time
high for November.
Frontex chief
welcomes plan for more powerful EU border force
Migrants and
refugees, who spent the night outdoors, are escorted by Slovenian
soldiers and police officers as they walk towards a refugee camp
after crossing the Croatian-Slovenian border near Rigonce, Slovenia,
on October 26, 2015
Head of body
entrusted with guarding Europe’s border argues move should have
been made sooner
Despite Mr
Timmermans’ insistence that the new agency’s supranational powers
would be rarely used, the proposal appears tailor-made for Greece,
which for months resisted EU demands that it invite in Frontex and
other EU agencies to help contain the influx.
Athens only complied
in recent weeks after several senior EU officials threatened to
suspend Greece from the Schengen agreement.
Under the new
proposal, a weighted majority of EU countries could vote to override
Greek objections and send in assistance — even if Athens voted
against the plan in Brussels.
Officials
acknowledged giving powers to an EU agency to send in guards — some
of whom could be armed and empowered with the right to force migrants
into registration centres — over the objections of a national
government could lead to tensions.
chart: Refugee
arrivals to Greece
But they insisted EU
law would allow them to impose such a decision by a weighted majority
vote of other EU countries, and that the country facing the emergency
would be legally bound to comply with the demand.
“It’s the loyal
duty of the member state concerned to implement the decision,” said
one European Commission official involved in drafting the plan. “If
the member state does not co-operate, we will have a practical
problem, indeed. But we assume their loyal co-operation.”
According to a
10-page summary of the proposal adopted by the European Commission at
its weekly meeting on Tuesday, such a deployment would only occur in
“urgent situations”, including during a “disproportionate
increase in the pressure” at a country’s external borders “where
the national border guard authorities . . . are not able to
cope”.
At first, the agency
would push the problem country to take “timely corrective action”
on its own or as a joint operation with others. But if “deficiencies”
continued, Brussels could issue a directive for guards to be deployed
that would be submitted to a technical committee made up of
representatives of all 28 national governments, which would then have
to approve the decision — but only under the EU’s weighted
majority voting rules.
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