The prime ministers of Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania were to hold talks yesterday on how to tackle record numbers of migrants at the onset of winter, ahead of a mini-EU summit to discuss a coordinated response.
Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania are among the countries on the migrants’ route from Turkey up through the Balkans to northern Europe.
Yesterday’s talks in Bulgarian capital Sofia, come a day ahead of a meeting of leaders in Brussels called by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who has been urging a cross-border approach to the worst migrant crisis in Europe since World War II.
Photo: AFP
Hostility toward migrants streaming into Europe is mounting, with Germany on Thursday foiling an extremist plot to torch migrant shelters and Swedish police saying a sword attack on a school with many immigrant pupils was motivated by racism.
Most of the migrants — a flow of more than 670,000 coming into Europe this year, mainly fleeing violence in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan — want to get to Germany, the EU’s economic powerhouse.
Juncker on Friday said he backed German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door policy toward migrants, even though the welcoming stance has threatened to cause a backlash, with the country bracing for up to a million asylum requests this year. Juncker heaped praise on her on Friday.
“I appreciate very much that the chancellor does not change course because of opinion polls. It is not a question of short-term popularity, but the very substance of what politics is about,” said Juncker, who is hosting today’s talks, was quoted as telling the Funke-Mediengruppe press group.
However, in a sign of possible friction ahead, the small Alpine country of Slovenia — a new hotspot in the crisis — warned it might build Europe’s latest border fence to stem the tide of migrants unless it gets more help from the summit.
GROWING HOSTILITY
In a sign of the growing stress on Germany, police in the southern town of Bamberg arrested 13 members of a far-right movement suspected of planning arson attacks on two homes for asylum seekers, prosecutors said on Thursday.
Sweden is the EU’s other top destination for asylum seekers, and police said an attack by a sword-wielding man, who killed two people at a school in the southwestern town of Trollhattan, was “racially motivated.”
Today’s summit in Brussels is to bring the leaders of non-EU members Macedonia and Serbia together with the leaders of eight EU countries: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Romania and Slovenia.
“The past weeks have shown that there is no national solution to the problem,” Juncker’s spokesman Margaritis Schinas said. “Only a European collective cross-border approach based on cooperation can succeed.”
According to German media, Juncker has drafted 16 proposals for today’s talks.
They include an undertaking that no country will let migrants through to an adjoining state without first getting the neighbor’s agreement to do so.
He is reportedly also floating proposals to speed up expulsion of migrants who have been denied asylum and to withdraw the right of asylum to people who do not register their request in the first EU state where they landed.
With thousands more people arriving from Croatia on Friday, Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar said he hoped today’s EU meeting would bring solutions, but did not rule out erecting a barrier along the 670km frontier with Croatia.
“We are considering that option too but at this moment... we are still looking for a European option,” Cerar told state television late on Thursday.
Ljubljana has asked Brussels for 140 million euros (US$154 million), in addition to police backup and logistical support.
More than 47,500 people have entered the country of just 2 million, since Saturday last week when Hungary shut its frontier with Croatia, barely a month after also closing its Serbian border.
Hungary had previously been the preferred transit country of migrants bound for Germany via Austria.
Meanwhile, a German law to tighten up asylum rules was published in the country’s official gazette on Friday, enabling it to take effect yesterday, a week earlier than expected.
In addition to accelerating the expulsion of people deemed to be economic migrants, the law will restrict the right of political asylum to exceptional cases for nationals from Albania, Montenegro and Kosovo.
Germany and other EU countries have also been pressuring Turkey, from where migrants fleeing conflict and misery in the Middle East and Asia set sail for Europe, to do more to stem the outflow.
Turkish ambassador to the EU Selim Yenel on Friday said that Ankara would only comply if the EU fulfilled several key promises, including 3 billion euros in aid.
Heavy rain and strong winds yesterday disrupted flights, trains and ferries, forcing the closure of roads across large parts of New Zealand’s North Island, while snapping power links to tens of thousands. Domestic media reported a few flights had resumed operating by afternoon from the airport in Wellington, the capital, although cancelations were still widespread after airport authorities said most morning flights were disrupted. Air New Zealand said it hoped to resume services when conditions ease later yesterday, after it paused operations at Wellington, Napier and Palmerston North airports. Online images showed flooded semi-rural neighborhoods, inundated homes, trees fallen on vehicles and collapsed
FRAYED: Strains between the US-European ties have ruptured allies’ trust in Washington, but with time, that could be rebuilt, the Michigan governor said China is providing crucial support for Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and could end the war with a phone call, US Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker said. “China could call [Russian President] Vladimir Putin and end this war tomorrow and cut off his dual-purpose technologies that they’re selling,” Whitaker said during a Friday panel at the Munich Security Conference. “China could stop buying Russian oil and gas.” “You know, this war is being completely enabled by China,” the US envoy added. Beijing and Moscow have forged an even tighter partnership since the start of the war, and Russia relies on China for critical parts
In a softly lit Shanghai bar, graduate student Helen Zhao stretched out both wrists to have her pulse taken — the first step to ordering the house special, a bespoke “health” cocktail based on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). “TCM bars” have popped up in several cities across China, epitomizing what the country’s stressed-out, time-poor youth refer to as “punk wellness,” or “wrecking yourself while saving yourself.” At Shanghai’s Niang Qing, a TCM doctor in a white coat diagnoses customers’ physical conditions based on the pulse readings, before a mixologist crafts custom drinks incorporating the herbs and roots prescribed for their ailments.
Two sitting Philippine senators have been identified as “coperpetrators” in former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s crimes against humanity trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC), documents released by prosecutors showed. Philippine senators Ronald Dela Rosa and Christopher Go are among eight current and former officials named in a document dated Feb. 13 and posted to the court’s Web site. ICC prosecutors have charged Duterte with three counts of crimes against humanity, alleging his involvement in at least 76 murders as part of his “war on drugs.” “Duterte and his coperpetrators shared a common plan or agreement to ‘neutralize’ alleged criminals in the Philippines
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