Crunch moment for EU migrant crisis

[MikeWB]

About time that Merkel is getting heat from her own party. Hope they fire her soon. Evil bitch destroyed EU and Germany.




Europe's migration crisis is hurtling towards a potentially defining turning point this month, with the pillars of the EU's policy under sustained assault and German chancellor Angela Merkel facing the first electoral test of her refugee policy.

EU leaders are preparing for an emergency migration summit on Monday against the backdrop of desperate scenes at the Greece-Macedonia border, where crowds of migrants were beaten back from storming a fence with a salvo of tear gas.


Four crucial components of Europe's migration response are at stake: the centrepiece effort to stem irregular migration from Turkey; the capacity of Greece to cope with tens of thousands of migrants trapped on its territory; the willingness of Europe to unite behind a common policy; and the political patience remaining in Germany, the main destination for migrants reaching Europe.

Intense diplomacy over the next fortnight may dictate whether the EU is able to get a grip, or fracture and fall-back on national defences against an expected influx this spring and summer.

End of the road for Merkel's "Plan A"?

Ms Merkel is beset on all sides domestically and isolated abroad. The arrival of 1.1m refugees into Germany has eroded her once soaring popularity and that of her governing CDU/CSU bloc.

The CDU is bracing itself for a poor showing in three state elections scheduled for March 13 that have turned into a referendum on the chancellor's refugee strategy. The upstart Alternative für Deutschland, a rightwing populist party which wants to close the border, is polling strongly: and critics within Ms Merkel's own party are demanding a change of course.

Some diplomats in Brussels suggest that such a change is already under way. There remains a dissonance in messages from Berlin. Diplomats noted the "radically" different tone of German interior minister Thomas de Maizière at the meeting of home affairs ministers in Brussels last week. But in public, Berlin is sticking to Ms Merkel's policy, based primarily on an EU deal with Turkey to crack down on people smuggling across the Aegean, insisting there is "no plan B".

Two crucial meetings in a fortnight — the EU-Turkey talks on March 7 and an EU migration summit on March 18 and 19 — will dictate whether it succeeds.

The EU is struggling to respond to a surge of desperate migrants that has resulted in thousands of deaths

Three months after Brussels and Ankara first reached a deal to reduce the flow of people from Turkey into Europe in November, more than 2,000 people per day are still making the risky crossing.

This has led to deadlock: Ankara will not reduce the flow until the EU starts taking in refugees directly from Turkey, while member states will not welcome any refugees with thousands still making the dangerous trip.

Privately, officials admit that Turkey has the upper hand. Mass returns of refugees and migrants from Greece to Turkey "cannot happen without resettlement", said one senior European diplomat.

Donald Tusk, European Council president, will fly to Ankara on Thursday for another meeting with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Ankara is aware it is in a strong position: the last time the duo met, Mr Erdogan threatened to bus refugees into Europe unless his demands were met.

Although diplomats despair about reaching a final deal acceptable to Turkey, the EU and its neighbour and regional rival Greece, one brutal motivating factor remains: neither Berlin nor Athens can cope — either politically or practically — with another 1m arrivals in 2016.

Greece: the moment they all feared

Images of tear gas fired against refugees rushing to break down a barbed wire fence on the Greek-Macedonian border was not the organised response officials envisaged when the crisis picked up last summer.

Whereas only a few months ago EU officials complained bitterly about Greece's mishandling of the influx, now they are more worried about a humanitarian crisis, with up to 70,000 refugees forecast to be stuck country in the coming weeks.

A hawk on Greece's economy, Germany has turned dove on its refugee crisis. "We didn't keep Greece in the euro only to then leave [it] . . . in the lurch," said Ms Merkel on Sunday.

Death of European solidarity and the 'common' policy

Nine months after it was first floated, the EU's flagship policy of relocating refugees from Italy and Greece has resulted in roughly 600 out of a proposed 160,000 people actually moving.
Jeremy Banx illustration, Macedonia

After months of argument and little visible progress, member states have started acting alone. Recent moves by Austria, once Germany's closest ally on the refugee question, and nine of its neighbours to partially close their borders triggered chaos upstream in Greece.

EU officials are frantically searching for ways to revive a common refugee policy. One is to allow countries to take in refugees from Turkey in lieu of taking them in from Italy and Greece. But while governments in central and eastern Europe are open to this idea, Italy and Greece are not.

"We're close to our worst nightmare — a negative spiral of closed borders and independent policies," said one eurozone minister. "I don't want to go there, but we don't have long."
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f229c7c6-df07-11e5-b072-006d8d362ba3.html