Europe loves refugees from afar
The highest executive body of the European Union – the European Commission – heard Guterres' call: last Wednesday a quota system was published for the distribution among EU member states of refugees from third world countries, now mostly accumulated in Italy and Greece. As Russkaya Germaniya notes, the document outlines the criteria by which they are to be distributed: population size, total GDP, unemployment rate, and the number of already accepted persons. As stated by EU Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos, 23 EU countries are expected to host 40,000 people – mainly from Syria and Eritrea.
Why twenty-three if the EU includes 28 countries? The fact is that the UK, Ireland and Denmark are excluded from the quota system due to special arrangements. And Greece and Italy lack the capacity to solve the problem of the growing number of migrants arriving by boat. But it is far from certain that the authorities of even these 23 countries will agree to accept them.
"I am against setting quotas for migrants. This has never matched the proposals coming from France," said French Prime Minister Manuel Valls. "In the last three years we have already accepted 5,000 refugees from Syria and 4,500 from Iraq."
The Brussels initiative was also negatively received in Poland, which according to EC plans is to accept 2,600 migrants. "Each country, knowing its capabilities, should decide for itself," stated the Polish government's spokesperson, Malgorzata Wozniak. "Poland in this matter must take into account the unstable situation in Ukraine. We reckon that people from Ukraine will seek help and support from us."
Bulgaria also objects: "There are currently 94 refugees on the border between Bulgaria and Turkey, whom we simply have nowhere to house at the moment," said the chairman of the Bulgarian Red Cross, Hristo Grigorov. "All our refugee accommodation centers are overflowing."
"Mandatory quotas and distribution of migrants without regard for the opinions of countries or the refugees themselves will not solve this problem in the long term," believes Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka.
"Lithuania is not ready to accept as many refugees as the European Commission proposes (under the EC plan, Lithuania's quota is 710 people)," says Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius. "Our government is currently preparing a project that plans to accept between 30 and 40 refugees."
Having served as Latvia's Minister of Defense and Foreign Affairs in various years, and now a member of the European Parliament, Artis Pabriks considers it necessary to include in the criteria for determining refugee quotas the total number of previously accepted immigrants, not just refugees, as the EC plan stipulates. He considers as immigrants all those who have arrived in the country over the last 60 years, as well as their descendants (that's about half the country's population). "We consider as immigrants those people who came here without our permission, that is, after 1945," BBC quotes Pabriks.
But the most outspoken on this issue was Kristiina Ojuland, who served as Estonia's Foreign Minister in 2000-2005 and is the leader of the Party of People's Unity: "Today as a white person I feel that the white race is in danger. It will be a catastrophe if immigrants end up in Estonia," the country's largest newspaper Postimees quotes her as saying. "The negro question is existential and irreversible for Estonia. If we let them in, history cannot be turned back." The only encouraging thing about this statement is that this blue-eyed blonde's party garnered only 0.4% of the vote in the latest elections.
Unlike the listed countries, Germany is ready to accept 8,763 refugees. "In this way we make our contribution. We hope that other EU countries will also be ready to take on part of the responsibility," said the German government's commissioner for migration affairs, Aydan Özoğuz.