Last year
more than a million people crossed the Mediterranean Sea in the attempt to
reach Europe, nearly 4000 of them dying on the way. The number of refugees
crossing the sea from Turkey to Greece increased 20 times from 2014 to 2015.
Arrivals in Italy decreased but only slightly, from 170,100 in 2014 to 153,842
in 2015.
As of 7th February 2016, the United Nations
High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that 4.6 million Syrian refugees
are in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and the rest of North Africa.
Turkey has the largest share with 1.9 million people.
The origins of refugeesOverall, 48% of the
refugees that managed to cross the Mediterranean were Syrian, 21% were Afghans,
9% Iraqi and 4% Eritreans. Most refugees
arriving in Greece in 2015 were Syrian or Afghan, while Italy received
proportionally more people from Eritrea, Nigeria and Somalia.
Greece has received 74,052 refugees so far
this year, and it is expected that the bulk of refugees will continue to arrive
on Greek shores. A UNHCR report, published at the end of January 2016, predicts
that up to 1 million refugees and migrants could attempt to use the Eastern
Mediterranean and Western Balkan route to Europe in 2016. This is “based on
analysis of the current level of arrivals, the push and pull factors affecting
the movements, and the situation in countries of origin related to this
emergency”.
The situation continues to escalate. Last
week 70,000 people were reported to have fled towards the Syrian border with
Turkey due to increased conflict around Aleppo. Very few migrants stay in
Greece. The number of Syrian asylum applications received by EU countries (plus
Norway and Switzerland) reached almost 600,000 at the end of 2015. Germany and
Sweden receive over half of all applications, with Hungary, Austria, the
Netherlands, Denmark and Bulgaria accounting for another 30%.
For migrants and refugees, Greece is the
door to the Balkan route to Western and Northern Europe, passing through FYR
Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia and Austria. Greece is the door
to the Balkan route to Western and Northern Europe. Since the UNHCR began
monitoring departures from the main entry points into Europe in July 2015, it
is estimated that almost 700,000 refugees and migrants have moved from Greece
into the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
Almost all of them travelled onward to
Serbia, attempting to cross the Hungarian border. By the end of 2015,
approximately 815,000 had travelled through Serbia, with about 6,500 people
entering the country every day in October and November.
In September Hungary took measures to stem
the flows of refugees across its border with Serbia, including building a 110
mile long fence. This redirected movement towards the Serbian-Croatian border.
From mid-September 2015, a total of 557,743 refugees and migrants travelled
through Croatia, only 21 applying for asylum there.
Most of them moved on to Slovenia. 378,000
people moved through the country between October and December 2015, with only
144 people applying for asylum. Figure 4 shows the transit recorded so far in
2016.
Europe’s response to the refugee crisis:
slow and confusedThere are rumours that inhabitants of the Greek islands where
the refugees first arrive could be nominated for the Nobel peace prize for
their “empathy and self-sacrifice”. The overall European response, however, has
been slow and disorganised.
EU countries agreed on a relocation scheme
to help Greece and Italy deal with the influx of refugees last year. The plan
is to relocate 40,000 Syrian and Eritrean nationals, from Italy and Greece to
other EU Member States. In September 2015 it was decided that relocate an
additional 120,000 refugees would be from Greece, Hungary and Italy, bringing
the total to 160,000 to be relocated over the next two years.
Up to now, however, implementation of the
solidarity scheme has been very slow (figure 5). Based on European Commission
data, as of 4th February 2016 only 279 people had been relocated from Italy and
202 from Greece, with France and Finland being by far the major recipients.
If relocation continues at the current
speed, it will take more than 100 years to achieve the planned relocation from
Greece. This means that if relocation continues at the current speed, it will
take 47 years to relocate 39,600 people from Italy and more than 100 years to
achieve the planned relocation from Greece. While this initial slowness might
be due to the need to set up the relocation scheme agreed, EU member states are
reluctant to share the task ahead of them.
From time to time new confused ideas are
floated that could be even more useless than inaction. Greece has been recently
given a one month deadline to meet EU norms on refugee policy, while EU Member
States have even been discussing whether to send border guards or troops to
Macedonia (a non-EU country) to seal the border with Greece (an EU country).
This would suggest that rather than pushing
for the implementation of the agreed relocation scheme, the new focus is on
trapping hundreds of thousands of refugees in a country that currently has the
worst economic situation in the EU, potentially creating an explosive
situation.
After the EU and Turkey reached a 3 billion
euro deal to stem the flows of migrants into Greece, a Dutch-led proposal was
floated, pushing for EU volunteer countries to take 250,000 refugees a year
from Turkey, if Ankara succeeds in reducing the flows to Greece.
The new focus is on trapping hundreds of
thousands of refugees in a country that currently has the worst economic
situation in the EU. However this is less than one third of the number of
migrants who crossed the sea last year, so it is doubtful that the scheme could
help replace illegal migration with legal migration. Turkey is unenthusiastic
about the idea, as it would still need to take care of those who can no longer
leave.
These figures give an idea of the scale of
the emergency. As the migrant crisis ratchets up the pressure on already flimsy
European political cohesion, EU leaders meet to discuss Europe’s response to
the refugee crisis on 18-19 February. The world will be watching.
Πηγή:
balkans.com
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