January 25, 2016
8:32 am
Athens
hits back at EU plan to ringfence Greece
Andrew Byrne in
Idomeni
Greece has hit back
at European proposals for tightened security on its northern border
with Macedonia, describing the latest plans to staunch the flow of
refugees into Europe as a dangerous experiment that would
“traumatise” the country.
The proposals to
dispatch joint police forces along Macedonia’s border with Greece —
first outlined in a letter sent by Miro Cerar, prime minister of
Slovenia, to fellow EU leaders last week — have gained political
momentum ahead of a meeting of EU interior ministers in Amsterdam on
Monday.
The plan seeks to
shift the frontline of Europe’s refugee control efforts to the
northern part of Greece, where the government is already straining to
manage the influx with limited resources.
A Slovenian
government statement on Friday claimed the proposal would allow an
end to internal Schengen border controls and said it had received
strong backing from central European countries, including Hungary and
Poland, while “positive signals” had been received from Brussels.
EU officials were in Macedonia on Friday to assess conditions on the
ground ahead of Monday’s talks.
But Ioannis
Mouzalas, Greece’s minister for migration, said ringfencing Greece
from the Schengen zone would not stop asylum seekers making their way
to northern Europe, adding that Athens had not been consulted on the
plan in advance.
Instead, Mr Mouzalas
called for greater assistance for Turkey to help it reduce the
numbers crossing the Aegean Sea to Greece. More than 2,000 asylum
seekers arrive from Turkey each day before making the journey
overland to the EU through the western Balkans.
“It’s not easy
to trap [asylum seekers] and we do not intend to become a cemetery of
souls here. We cannot understand what kind of policy it is that a
country would close its borders with Greece,” he said on Sunday
evening. “We do not have time to experiment with things that will
only worsen the trauma.”
Mr Mouzalas was
speaking hours before the plan was due to be discussed at the
Amsterdam meeting. He said EU officials had not sought Greece’s
views on the proposal until Sunday, when he met with Dimitris
Avramopoulos, the EU’s migration Commissioner, in Athens.
The EU is struggling
to respond to a surge of desperate migrants that has resulted in
thousands of deaths
The plans have
caused alarm in Greece, where the government has previously warned
against turning the country into a “black box” for refugees. The
proposal is especially contentious because Macedonia is not an EU
member state and has troubled relations with its southern neighbour —
Athens has blocked the country’s Nato accession in a dispute over
its official name.
“EU institutions
making plans with countries like Fyrom [Former Yugoslav Republic of
Macedonia], that are not member states, and then leaving actual
member states out of this dialogue — this is not the way to reach a
solution,” said Mr Mouzalas.
The border clampdown
is the latest in a series of initiatives which ministers are
examining as pressure mounts to reduce the number of new arrivals.
Mark Rutte, prime minister of the Netherlands, last week said the EU
had “six to eight weeks” to find an effective solution, or else
the passport-free Schengen zone would collapse.
Mr Cerar on Friday
said he hoped a “concrete, realistic proposal” would be agreed
within days, adding “it is high time we took more effective action
in relation to the so-called Balkan and central European migration
route”.
Earlier plans, such
as a €3bn EU aid programme for Turkey in return for its commitment
to reduce refugee arrivals, have so far failed to stem the flow of
asylum seekers arriving at Europe’s shores. More than 43,000
migrants arrived in Greece by sea in January alone.
Although no formal
decisions will be made on Monday, the ministerial talks will be an
opportunity for a candid and open discussion on the new security
proposals.
In its briefing
paper to ministers, the Netherlands, which holds the rotating
presidency of the EU, suggested that without fast-action on proposals
such as the common border force, it may be impossible to avoid
invoking “Article 26” of the Schengen code.
This would pave the
way to temporarily closing one or more internal borders within
Schengen for up to two years, in effect making the ad hoc border
restrictions announced since September a longer-term fixture that
would fracture the passport-free zone.
Dimitris
Avramopoulos, the commissioner responsible for migration, said at the
weekend: “If Schengen collapses then the entire European structure
will start collapsing”.
Additional reporting
Duncan Robinson in Amsterdam and Alex Barker in Brussels
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