Talking about solidarity, maybe we should focus more of our attention on the real culprits in Europe. No other country in Europe has so much to gain from its membership yet gives so little in return, yes, you hear it right, Great Britain. The number of exemptions they bargained are mind numbing and the way they run away from responsibilities is flabbergasting.
Maybe we should all be more honest about facts and reject fiction and lies. Germany showed and still shows an immense amount of solidarity everywhere in Europe. The real black sheep are to be found here (source FT):
Here the hard facts: Germany will most likely process 400,000 asylum seekers in 2015 while the UK processes around 26,000 applications and accepts only 10,000. So much to solidarity to share burdens in Europe. I have no issue with looking at things to improve but I have issues with Brits pointing fingers at Germany. Those people are some of the most self-absorbed and egotistical people in Europe.
UK complaints over Calais crisis find little sympathy in the EU
British complaints over a few thousand people in
Calais trying to cross its borders find few sympathetic ears around Europe, with some EU members having to deal with 10 times the number of
asylum seekers.
The UK chose not to join an EU scheme, hatched earlier this year, aimed at relocating 40,000 migrants from Greece and Italy more evenly across the bloc. While Britain has an opt-out on any EU migration policy, other countries with the same arrangement — such as Ireland — nonetheless agreed to join the scheme, leaving Britain alongside only Hungary and Austria in refusing to take part.
The plan to build larger walls around the Channel tunnel’s entrance prompted one senior European Commission official to put her head in her hands when asked about it. Britain’s enthusiasm for this policy comes just as the commission is attempting to persuade
Hungary to drop a similar move on the other side of the continent.
“The Commission is aware that the situation as regards migrants in Calais is deteriorating,” a commission spokesperson said. “This is another stark example of the need for a greater level of solidarity and responsibility in the way we deal with migratory pressures in Europe.”
But Britain has shown little sign of that solidarity even though the migration pressures on some EU countries are vastly greater than those on the UK.
Germany takes the largest number of refugees of all EU states, a record of which it is proud. So far this year, more than 179,000 people have applied for asylum in Germany, and the numbers, driven by the numerous crises in the Middle East, are unlikely to abate.
That puts Germany on course to process 400,000 people arriving in the country in 2015, the highest figure since the wave of refugees in the 1990s triggered by the Yugoslavia conflict.
By contrast, 26,000 people applied for asylum in the UK in 2014, according to Eurostat, with 10,000 applications accepted.
Refugees are distributed across Germany’s 16 regions and have to remain in the place to which they are assigned or lose accommodation and benefits. The system spreads both the costs and the possible tensions — as well as the potential benefits stemming from refugees who secure residency, find work and ease Germany’s chronic labour shortages.
This approach has been strained by the sheer scale of the recent inflow, leaving some local authorities to house refugees not in flats, as normal, but in emergency accommodation, including converted containers.
Public protests have also increased, especially in the former East Germany, where immigration is generally low and people have limited experience of foreigners.
For the most part, German political leaders have avoided attacking the UK and France over the Channel tunnel chaos. But Sigmar Gabriel, vice-chancellor, came close last week during a visit to a well-run asylum hostel in northern Germany — where the conditions contrast starkly with the encampment in Calais known as the jungle.
Europe’s failure to agree on a refugee policy, Mr Gabriel said, was “scandalous”, while the situation in Calais and the refusal of some EU states to accept asylum seekers was “the worst failure” of the EU.
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German media outlets point out how few asylum seekers the UK takes in comparison with the political heat the issue generates. Handelsblatt, the business daily, said in an online article: “Once Great Britain was a safe haven for the persecuted from the whole world. Now the country is fighting against a new flow of refugees.”
Italy, on the front line of the migration crisis, has this year received more than 90,000 refugees from the Middle East and north Africa who have crossed the Mediterranean from Libya. By the end of this year the total is expected to at least match the 170,000 migrants who arrived in 2014.
Rome has issued repeated pleas for the EU — including the UK — to help with search-and-rescue missions and allow the redistribution of migrants across member states. The UK’s only contribution so far has been to send one Royal Navy ship to help save people in danger of drowning during the sea crossing to Europe.
As a result, Italy has little sympathy for British calls for increased EU efforts to tackle the crisis. The Italian government has also faced a domestic political backlash over its handling of the migrant crisis, with rightwing critics accusing it of being too lenient; the UK’s refusal to join the migrant “quota” system has only heightened that criticism.
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As for France, while Paris has been keen to highlight its co-operation with the UK in confronting the Calais crisis, French diplomats say the UK’s opposition to the burden-sharing plan is unhelpful. Yet France has its own tensions with other EU countries, notably Italy, who it believes does not do enough to process and track migrants when they land on Italy’s shores.
In the southern town of Menton, French police play an endless — and relatively ineffective — cat-and-mouse game with hundreds of migrants attempting to cross the Franco-Italian border every day.
As a result, border controls abolished in 1995 with the creation of the Schengen zone have been reinstated, and nearly every train from Ventimiglia, the final Italian railway station before Menton, is searched for Middle Eastern or African-looking passengers.
French authorities say they catch about 1,000 migrants a week, reaching the record levels of a year ago when about 15,000 were turned back to Italy. But many migrants slip through and make for Nice before heading for Paris, where they have established several camps.
With the anti-immigration National Front running high in polls, the socialist government has tried not to appear soft on the issue. France granted asylum in about one-fifth of the 64,811 requests it received last year, compared with more than 40 per cent in Germany, which had a far higher number of applicants.
