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EU's southern states step up calls for 'solidarity' in managing mass migration


Europe’s southern states have stepped up calls for solidarity in managing mass migration to the bloc saying the burden has to be shared more justly with other EU partners.

Highlighting the deep divisions over the issue, politicians from countries along Europe’s Mediterranean rim said a proposed migration pact fell far short of resolving the crisis equitably.

“In its current format, the pact does not provide sufficient reassurances to the frontline member states,” the interior and migration ministers of Greece, Italy, Spain, Cyprus and Malta said in a joint statement after meeting in Athens.

The blueprint, which aims to overhaul the EU’s asylum and migration policies, was put forward by the European Commission last autumn.

Still under discussion, it foresees replacing what Brussels has acknowledged as ad-hoc solutions to one of Europe’s greatest challenges with a “predictable and reliable migration management system.”

But the new asylum policies have been heavily criticised by the countries most affected by migration flows and EU member states in the east.

While frontline nations argue it doesn’t go far enough to ensure fair distribution of responsibility within the union, Visegrad countries, led by Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán, reject the migration plan on the basis of it requiring the 27-country bloc to accept asylum-seeker quotas as part of a “compulsory solidarity mechanism.”

Addressing reporters at the Athens meeting, Italy’s interior minister, Luciana Lamorgese said it was crucial the Mediterranean countries formed a “united front.”

“Six months after the official launch of negotiations for a new European migration and asylum pact, and despite having presented different proposals regarding the common position of our countries, our basic concerns continue to exist,” she said. “The mechanisms of solidarity remain unclear.”

Margaritis Schinas, the European Commission’s vice-president and chief coordinator of the pact, also said it was time for solidarity to be reconciled with geography. “We are here [because these] five countries of the Mediterranean south are forced, by geography, to carry a disproportionately large burden of the refugee [crisis] for all of Europe,” he told reporters. “We have reached the point where we have to reconcile the geography of Europe with the solidarity of Europe … solidarity has to be seen in practice.”

Malta’s minister of interior, national security and law enforcement, Byron Camilleri, went further, saying: “We can no longer be punished for our geographical position.”

Since the refugee crisis intensified with the eruption of civil wars in Syria and Libya, countries with extensive coastlines in Europe’s south have borne the brunt of receiving and registering asylum seekers. Aided by smugglers most make often perilous boat journeys from the western shores of Turkey to Lesbos and other Aegean islands or across the Mediterranean from North Africa. Cyprus has also seen a record number of arrivals with asylum seekers crossing the buffer zone that divides the island from the breakaway Turkish-held north. “Large numbers of migrants arrive on a daily basis … mostly via the green line, pushed through the occupied areas from Turkey,” said the island’s Greek Cypriot interior minister Nicos Nouris, bemoaning the fact that Ankara refused to either recognise or collaborate with the country. “In the two-year period between 2019 and 2020, alone, there were 25,894 asylum requests.”

The five nations came together last year, forging an alliance known as the “Med 5,” in an attempt to press their case within the EU. The Athens meeting, the first since the group was formed, also called for a centrally managed European returns system and more cooperation with origin and transit countries.

Arrivals in Greece, until recently the centre of the crisis, have dropped steadily since the EU reached an accord with Turkey to stem migrant flows.

Last year numbers plummeted further after authorities rushed to reinforce its borders as a result of chaotic and often violent scenes at the Greek-Turkish land frontier after Ankara encouraged migrants to head to Europe. Less than 100,000 migrants and refugees reached Europe in 2020 according to the UN.

But migration experts believe population movements will continue, exacerbated by the climate emergency and Covid-19.

Greece’s migration minister Notis Mitarachi called for solidarity to be “mandatory.”

“The problems of the frontline reception countries are recognised by all the member states,” he said. “But now this must be reflected in the new pact.”



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