EU planning refugee camps in Italy and Greece

EU member states are expected to draw radical new plans for the internment of “irregular migrants,” the creation of large new refugee camps in Italy and Greece and longer-term aims for the funding and building of camps in territories outside the EU to stem the flow of refugees towards Europe.

These plans are being discussed in a meeting of EU home affairs ministers today. Last week, EU Council President Donald Tusk warned that he will call an extraordinary summit if the home affairs ministers fail to reach an agreement.

The summit, called in reaction to the influx of thousands of Syrian refugees, is expected to water down demands from the European Commission, strongly supported by Germany, for the obligatory sharing of refugees across at least 22 countries.

A draft statement leaked to the Guardian, focuses on strengthening “Fortress Europe” and says “reception facilities will be organised so as to temporarily accommodate people” in Greece and Italy while they are identified, registered, and finger-printed.

Asylum claims are to be processed quickly and those who fail are to be deported promptly, the draft statement says.

EU ministers are also expected to propose the creation of rapid border intervention teams to be deployed at “sensitive external borders.”

Failed asylum seekers who are expected to try to move to another EU country from Greece or Italy can be interned, the draft statement says.

Britain to opt-out from resettlement programmes

Speaking before the start of the meeting, British minister Theresa May said the UK will be opting out of the EU’s quota plan for the resettlement of refugees.

The European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker last week demanded that at least 22 EU countries accept a new system of quotas for refugees, with 160,000 redistributed from Greece, Italy and Hungary under a binding new system.

The draft statement says ministers are “committed” to sharing the 160,000 refugees, but made no mention of the system being obligatory, said no formal decision on the matter would be taken until next month and appeared to dilute the commission’s call by describing it as “the basis” for a decision, which would also pay “due regard to the flexibility that could be needed by member states in the implementation of the decision, in particular to accommodate unforeseen developments”.

In the medium-term, the statement says, the bloc should aim at funding and setting up refugee camps outside Europe and that failed asylum-seekers could be sent from Europe to these camps, which would not be in their countries of origin.

Moreover, Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz today confirmed her government’s opposition to the imposition of binding EU quotas and said the EU’s external borders must be strictly controlled.

She also said that Poland would restore its own border controls if it saw any outside threats.

This came after Germany introduced border controls on Sunday, and dramatically halted all train traffic with Austria, after the country’s regions said they could no longer cope with the overwhelming number of refugees entering the country.

Interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, announced the measures after German officials said record numbers of refugees, most of them from Syria, had stretched the system to breaking point. “This step has become necessary,” he told a press conference in Berlin, adding it would cause disruption.

Asylum seekers must understand “they cannot choose the states where they are seeking protection,” he told reporters.
The reintroduction of border controls has led to fears for the future of the Schengen system and an unnamed diplomat coined the term “Schexit” in anticipation of a possible dismantling of the free borders area.

Hungary’s right wing prime minister, Viktor Orban, vowed to push ahead with a controversial border crackdown due to come into force at midnight, amid UN claims that his government is transporting migrants from the Serbian border to the Austrian frontier ahead of the change.
Under the plans the anti-immigration Hungarian government will deport asylum seekers who do not use police-supervised border checkpoints to register with authorities back to Serbia.