More than half of the EU’s leaders yesterday met in Brussels to grapple with a resurgent political crisis over migration that threatens to tear the bloc apart.
The 16 heads of government and state are responding to alarm about growing rifts not only among the EU’s 28 members, but also within the German government itself, the bloc’s most powerful.
As tensions rise between Rome and Paris, as well as between Rome and Berlin, the top-level talks were designed to help clear the heavy air for a previously scheduled full summit of all EU leaders on Thursday and Friday.
However, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has conceded “no solution will be reached” on the overall migration issue at either summit.
This is despite a sharp decrease in migrant arrivals since their peak in 2015, when more than 1 million Syrian asylum seekers and others entered the EU.
Political developments in Italy, a major migrant landing point, and in wealthy Germany, their top destination, have brought the EU’s political crisis back.
Since assuming office several weeks ago, Italy’s new populist government has refused to admit foreign-flagged rescue ships packed with hundreds of migrants.
After turning away the Aquarius, which later docked in Spain, Rome on Saturday vowed to block the Lifeline, a German charity vessel with more than 230 people aboard.
Reflecting popular anger over the failure of EU member states for years to shoulder more of the migrant burden, Rome has pledged not to take in one more asylum seeker.
Italy’s stance has raised tension both with Germany and within Merkel’s coalition government, with EU diplomats saying the mini-summit was to help “save” the German chancellor.
With a populist backlash over her initial open-door policy toward asylum seekers, Merkel emerged weakened in recent elections.
Germany’s new hard-line Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer has given Merkel until the end of this month to find a European deal to curb new arrivals.
If that fails, he vowed to order German border police to turn back migrants, which means many would likely have to return to Italy.
Under the so-called Dublin rules, asylum seekers must be processed in the country where they first arrive, often Mediterranean countries such as Italy, Greece and Spain.
EU leaders in December last year had set the end of this month as a deadline to reform the rules by establishing a permanent mechanism to relocate asylum seekers throughout the bloc.
With such reform elusive, Merkel is pushing for bilateral, trilateral and multilateral deals.
Merkel also got Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte to attend the mini-summit by telling him pre-written conclusions had been withdrawn, Italian officials said.
Draft conclusions included calls to speed up returns to countries tasked with processing them, such as Italy.
Rome on Saturday accused French President Emmanuel Macron of “arrogance” for turning back migrants at the French-Italian border and minimizing Italy’s problem.
France’s human rights ombudsman Jacques Toubon also criticized the French response to the Aquarius crisis, telling the Journal du Dimanche newspaper that the migrants should have been allowed to enter the country.
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